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Hi Sean,
	One thing you can contemplate is doing it mechanically. We 
have good results processing small and floaty roots of the plant 
Arabidopsis thaliana by sandwiching them between two Formvar films. 
The films are over a wire loop which definitely sinks. Formvar is 
strong but allows all sorts of stuff to cross. But not antibodies. 
You have to take the tissue out from the films for that.

	If this sounds useful, I can give more details.

	Good luck,
		Tobias
>
>
>Hi all,
>    Bit of an off topic question, but we do lots of immunos on small bits of
>Drosophila tissue that always float on top of the fix due to the surface
>tension.  We can use low amounts of triton (.01%) to overcome this, but I
>would like to be able to leave detergents out until I am convinced the
>fixation is good.  In some cases I would like to do staining of only things
>on the cell surface, and thus need to leave detergents completely out of the
>staining procedure.  Therefore, does anyone know of a good surfactant that
>would break the surface tension but not permeabilize cells?
>
>Thanks,
>    Sean Speese


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       _      ____          __   ____   
      /  \   /          / \    /   \ \        Tobias I. Baskin
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