Tristan

Its worth pointing out that physiological saline may be fine for animal tissue
but will be quite toxic to plant material. Its also likely that agarose will be
too soft to section a leaf. One trick to get thinner sections is to cut the
material in a wedge shape so you get a really thin area at the end of the
section. You can also try hand sectioning with the leaf between two pieces of
pith (pith is available from your local microscopy consumables supplier - for
cleaning diamond knives). Cryo-sectioning might work but of course you need to
be able to access suitable equipment.

Good Luck

Lloyd Donaldson
Forest Research, Rotorua, New Zealand




> Tristan,
>         If you section something, embedded or not, you will kill it. You
> can freeze the tissue and section it, if your goal is to retain the ability
> to stain with immunocytochemical probes. Why not try confocal fluorescence
> or digital image sectioning.
> good luck!
>
> Steve Limbach
>


To give a suggestion to Tristans original question. You may try to embed
your tissue in 5% agarose in physiolgcal saline and make vibratome cuts
in the same saline immediatly after embedding. Keep the tissue in your
saline during the whole process and use water immersion lenses for
examination (oil immersion lenses won't match the refractive index of
your tissue and mounting medium).

Sincerely
Christian


--
Christian Lohr, Ph.D.
ARL Division of Neurobiology
University of Arizona
PO Box 210077
Tucson, AZ 85721-0077
Phone: (520) 621-6671
FAX: (520) 621-8282
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