1. Always wear a lab coat before enter the lab.

2. Regular attendance is required.

3. Each student is required to participate in all lab

activities.

4. Cheating will not be tolerated.

5. All quizzes & exams will be retained by the

instructor and not returned to the student.

GENERAL RULES

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Features of Tissue Classes

• Tissue = similar cells and cell products– arose from same region of embryo

• Differences between tissue classes– types and functions of cells

– characteristics of matrix (extracellular material)• fibrous proteins

• ground substance– clear gels (ECF, tissue fluid, interstitial fluid, tissue gel)

– rubbery or stony in cartilage or bone

– space occupied by cells versus matrix• connective tissue cells are widely separated

• little matrix between epithelial and muscle cells

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Tissue Techniques and Sectioning

• Preparation of histological specimens

– fixative prevents decay (formalin)

– sliced into thin sections 1 or 2 cells thick

– mounted on slides and colored with histological stain

• stains bind to different cellular components

• Sectioning reduces 3-dimensional structure to 2-dimensional slice

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Sectioning Solid Objects

• Sectioning a cell with a centrally located nucleus

• Some slices miss the cell nucleus

• In some the nucleus is smaller

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Sectioning Hollow Structures

• Cross section of blood vessel, gut, or other tubular organ.

• Longitudinal section of a sweat gland. Notice what a single slice could look like.

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Types of Tissue Sections

• Longitudinal section

– tissue cut along longest direction of organ

• Cross section

– tissue cut perpendicular to length of organ

• Oblique section

– tissue cut at angle between cross and longitudinal section

Microscope

PREPARATION OF HISTOLOGICAL SPECIMENS

TISSUE FIXATION

• Fixation is a complex series of chemical events that differ for the different groups of substance found in tissues.

• The aim of fixation:

1- To prevent autolysis and bacterial attack.

2- To fix the tissues so they will not change their volume and shape during processing.

3- To prepare tissue and leave it in a condition which allow clear staining of sections.

4- To leave tissue as close as their living state as possible, and no small molecules should be lost.

• Fixation is coming by reaction between the fixative and protein which form a gel, so keeping every thing as their in vivo relation to each other.

Factors affect fixation:

- PH.

- Temperature.

- Penetration of fixative.

- Volume of tissue.

According to previous factors we can determine the concentration of fixative and fixation time.

Types of fixative:Acetic acid, Formaldehyde, Ethanol, Glutaraldehyde, Methanol and Picric

acid.

TISSUE PROCESSING

the aim of tissue processing is to embed the tissue in a solid medium firm enough to support the tissue and give it sufficient rigidity to enable thin sections to be cut , and yet soft enough not to damage the knife or tissue.

Stages of processing:1- Dehydration.

2- Clearing.

3- Embedding.

Dehydrationto remove fixative and water from the tissue and replace them

with dehydrating fluid.

• To minimize tissue distortion from diffusion currents, delicate specimens are dehydrated in a graded ethanol series from water through 10%-20%-50%-95%-100% ethanol.

Types of dehydrating agents:

Ethanol, Methanol, Acetone.

Clearing

• replacing the dehydrating fluid with a fluid that is totally miscible with both the dehydrating fluid and the embedding medium.

• Some clearing agents:

- Zylene.

- Toluene.

- Chloroform.

- Benzene.

- Petrol.

Embedding• is the process by which tissues are surrounded by a medium such as agar,

gelatin, or wax which when solidified will provide sufficient external support during sectioning.

• Paraffin waxproperties :

• Paraffin wax is a polycrystalline mixture of solid hydrocarbons produced during the refining of coal and mineral oils. It is about two thirds the density and slightly more elastic than dried protein. Paraffin wax is traditionally marketed by its melting points which range from 39°C to 68°C.

• The properties of paraffin wax are improved for histological purposes by the inclusion of substances added alone or in combination to the wax:

- improve ribboning. - increase hardness.- decrease melting point- improve adhesion between specimen and wax

Precaution while embedding in wax

• The wax is clear of clearing agent.

• No dust particles must be present.

• Immediately after tissue embedding, the wax must be rapidly cooled to reduce the wax crystal size.

Processing methods and routine schedules

• Machine processing

• manual processing

• A microtome is a mechanical instrument used to cut biological specimens into very thin segments for microscopic examination. Most microtomes use a steel blade and are used to prepare sections of animal or plant tissues for histology. The most common applications of microtomes are

CUTTING

• using the microtome

STAINING

H & E is a charge-based, general purpose stain. Hematoxylin stains acidic molecules shades of blue. Eosin stains basic materials shades of red, pink and orange. H & E stains are universally used for routine histological examination of tissue sections.

Hematoxylin and Eosin (H & E)

• 40x5= 200x

• 100 x5 = 500x

• 100 x 10 =1000x

ResultsNuclei - blue - with some metachromasiaCytoplasm - various shades of pink-identifying different tissue components

Staining machine