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Abstract
The buffered picric acid paraformaldehyde fixative originally recommended for electronmicroscopy
and which has since been used occasionally for light-microscopic immunocytochemistry,
has been supplemented with glutaraldehyde and used as primary fixative for the perfusion
of rat brains. In the basal ganglia and preoptic area, substance P, somatostatin and
leu-enkephalin immunoreactive material was localized with the unlabelled antibody
enzyme method in thick sections cut from freeze-thaw treated blocks. Good penetration
of the antibodies without the use of detergents and the light background of the osmium-treated
sections allowed the selection for electron-microscopy of immunoreactive structures
as small as individual boutons that had been identified at the light-microscopic level.
It is suggested that the procedure may be useful for electron-microscopic sampling
of immunoreactive structures occurring infrequently over a large area or for the electron-microscopic
study of light-microscopically classified neurons.