Brain silver staining

DDC injection can be attenuatg with immediate posttrial intraventricular injections of norepinephrine. It should be noted that although these collective results are consistent with the view that the effects of DDC on memory are a consequence of the decrease in norepinephrine concentrations, there are other effects of the drug which may be important as we. For example, DDC produces a short-term increase in whole brain dopamine and, because DDC chelates zinc, the drug injection resultsg n bleaching of a sulfide silver stain in the hippocampal mossy fibers. It is there-... 

In 1906, German neuropathologist and psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer described eine eigenartige Erkrankung der Himrinde (a peculiar disease of the cerebral cortex). Alzheimer noted two abnormalities in autopsied brain tissue from his index case senile plaques, proteinaceous structures previously described in the brain of normal elderly people and abnormal cells deUneated with silver stain that became known as neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs). The distribution and abundance of tangle-filled neurons are now the main criteria used to diagnose Alzheimer disease (AD) at autopsy. 

Fig. 1. Identification of the endogenous brain GITl/p95-APPl complex by affinity chromatography on Racl-GTP columns. 100 tig of GST-Racl for each sample were adsorbed on 25 of glutathione-agarose beads. The adsorbed protein was loaded with GTP7S (GTP) or GDP/3S (GDP), washed, and each sample was then incubated for 1 h with rotation at 4° with 2 mg of lysate from E13 avian brain. After washing, samples were eluted for 1 h at room temperature with 8 M urea, and one third of the eluted fractions were loaded on a 8% acrylamide gel. 6 /rg of brain lysate (Lys), and eluate from beads loaded with GST-Racl and buffer only (last lane to the right) were included. After separation by SDS-PAGE, the gel was silver stained.

Fig. 1. Identification of proteins from rat brain cytosol that interact specifically with dynamin. Silver staining of the input rat brain cytosol (RBC, lane 2), the material eluted from immobilized GST (lane 3), material eluted from immobilized GDP-dynamin with GTPyS (lane 4), and material eluted from immobilized GTPyS -dynamin with GDP (lane 5). Proteins (lanes 3-5) were eluted in buffer containing 250 mM NaCl as described in the text. Eluted proteins specific to GST-dynamin GTPyS (lane 5) are labeled with an asterisk ( ). Reprinted from Newmyer et at, 2003, with permission from Elsevier.

The most definitive diagnosis of AD is a postmortem examination of the brain for the presence of two characteristic lesions the neuritic plaque (NP) and the neurofibrillary tangle. Both structures were originally described in 1906 by Alois Alzheimer using silver-based histological stains. The discovery of NPs was hailed as a watershed moment in the history of neurological disease as it helped shift society s perception of age-related dementia from social stigma to physical disease [2]. 

Another example is the application of the Jones-Marres silver method for rapid staining of fungi in the brain tissue of immunocompromised patients (Boon et al., 1998). This procedure can be carried out using the MicroMED BASIC microwave lab station (Milestone, s.r.l., 24010 Sorisole, Italy). The lab station has software for reliable control of power, time, and temperature using infrared temperature control for no-touch temperature determination. It also has a 360-degree rotation carousel (no hot spots) and produces printouts of the temperature and power levels used during various microwave steps. 

Fig. 3. Two-dimensional analysis of PDZ proteins interacting with the 5-HT2A and the 5-HT2C receptors C-termini. (A) Proteins from mice brain that bind to the C-terminus of the last 14 residues of the receptors were separated on 2D gels and stained with silver. Proteins that interact specifically (directly or indirectly) with the PDZ ligand of the receptor (arrows) were detected comparing protein patterns obtained with the native peptides (see Fig. 1) and mutant peptides in which the last residue was replaced by alanine. The position of one protein retained in a PDZ-independent manner by the 5-HT2A receptor C-terminus is also indicated (arrowhead). (B) Molecular determinants in the C-terminus of 5-HT2A receptor involved in its preferential interaction with CIPP.

Dempsey, F.W. and Wislocky, G.B. (1955) An electron microscopic study of the blood-brain barrier in the rat, employing silver nitrate as a vital stain. Journal of Biophysical and Biochemical Cytology, 1, 245-256. 

Hjorth-Simonsen, A. (1970) Fink-Heimer silver impregnation of degenerating axons and terminals in mounted cryostate sections of fresh and fixed brains. Stain Technol., 45, 199-204. 

There is also considerable evidence for a higher susceptibility to domoic acid toxicity during early postnatal development in rats [92,110,116,117,131]. Domoic acid induces a time-dependent behavioral toxicity in neonatal rats that is characterized by hyperactivity, stereotypic scratching, convulsions, and death at exposures 40-50 times lower by body weight in neonates than that reported in adults [116,117]. However, acute toxicity with domoic acid does not appear to cause structural alteration in the brain of neonates as assessed by Nissl staining and cupric silver histochemistry [117]. This is consistent with numerous other studies of neonatal seizures that demonstrate a generalized resistance to excitotoxic damage [135,136],... 

The brain was fixed in situ by perfusion with 10% buffered formalin and removed 1 week later. After weighing, thin pieces of cerebral tissue (0.5mm or less in thickness) were taken from certain regions of the frontal lobes and fixed again in 10% buffered formalin for 24 hours. Specimens were subsequently embedded in celloidin. All sections were stained with fast cresyl violet and Weil s methods for myelin. Blocks from similar areas were treated with Golgi s silver impregnation. 

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