Mouse Brain Tissue Sections

A coronal thin section of mouse brain (presented above) was immunofluorescently labeled for heavy chain neurofilament subunits (present in neurons) with chicken anti-NF-H antibodies followed by goat anti-chicken secondary antibodies conjugated to Alexa Fluor 488. In addition, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), which is strongly and specifically expressed in various astroglia and neural stem cells, was targeted in the specimen with rabbit anti-GFAP monoclonal antibodies visualized with goat anti-rabbit antibodies conjugated to Alexa Fluor 568. Nuclear DNA was counterstained with the probe Hoechst 33342. Images were recorded in grayscale with a 12-bit digital camera coupled to a Nikon Eclipse 80i microscope equipped with bandpass emission fluorescence filter optical blocks. During the processing stage, individual image channels were pseudocolored with RGB values corresponding to each of the fluorophore emission spectral profiles.