Neurons, Glial Cells, and DNA Visualized in a Sagittal Rat Brain Tissue Section

A sagittal section of rat brain was immunofluorescently labeled for phosphorylated neurofilaments with mouse anti-NF-P antibodies followed by goat anti-mouse secondary antibodies conjugated to Alexa Fluor 488. Neurofilaments are specialized intermediate filaments solely found in neurons, especially in their axons. In addition, glial fibrillary acidic protein, which is expressed in various astroglia and neural stem cells, was targeted with rabbit anti-GFAP antibodies visualized with goat anti-rabbit secondary antibodies conjugated to Alexa Fluor 568. Cell nuclei were labeled with the popular nuclear counterstain 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.

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