Tissue microdissection

A minimum of 50% of fetuses are to be examined for visceral alterations and a minimum of 50% for skeletal abnormalities. When a fresh tissue microdissection technique is being used for the visceral examination of rabbit fetuses, all fetuses should be examined for both visceral and skeletal abnormalities. 

Key words Fetal examination, Visceral, Fresh soft tissue. Fixed tissue. Microdissection... 

Several measurements require the collection of nervous tissue at necropsy and homogenization of the tissues prior to analysis simple tissue procedures and associated measurements often do not indicate the localization of effects. Assays using tissue microdissection and in vitro cell cultures can help in the understanding of neurotoxic mechanisms, and these are being used more widely (Abdulla and Campbell 1992 Costa 1998 Harry et al. 1998). The development of assays such as neural gold protein, amyloid precursor protein, neuron specific enolase, heat shock proteins, and amyloid precursor proteins to study nervous diseases may find applications in some toxicology studies where the assays can be adapted for laboratory animals (de la Monte et al. 1997 Fitzpatrick et al. 2000 Rajdev and Sharp 2000). 

The laser should not be refocused when changing objectives or spot sizes. It is only necessary to focus the laser once for each initial cap placement and any time the cap is repositioned on the tissue. Microdissection may be performed with any suitable laser spot size and a 4x, lOx, or 20x objective (PixCell) or a 2x, lOx, 20x, or 40x objective (Veritas). 

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