Stained histological sections

[Naphthalene]

I have made several sections of mouse brain of different thickness which were mounted on the same slide and stained simultaneously with hematoxylin-eosin.

Thicker 5 micron ones adsorb more dyes and show brighter staining. Thinner three micron sections attain only faint colors, but have crisper details in the cell nuclei and fibers. These sections show so-called subcomissural organ, a secretory structure with misterious functions. The tissue sample were obtained from vivarium of my research facility. I have manually embedded the sample in PEG (polyethylene glycol) and sectioned using a Brunel rotary microtome.

Images were taken with 40x achromat objective and processed in ImageJ to improve contrast and sharpness.
Three micron section:

Five micron section:

[tgss]

Very nice work Naphthalene. Very nice sections and images indeed. I'm assuming the triangular structure in each image is the section of the subcomissural organ? I had never heard of this before, and wonder if there are any hypotheses as to it's specific secretory function.
Tom W.

[Naphthalene]

Thank you, tgss!
You are right, the subcomissural organ is the central item on these images. As it's a very distinctive feature in brain, which can be easily identified, I used it for comparison of section morphology. This organ is believed to regulate the flow of cerebrospinal liquid through brain ventricular system and secrete hormones that promote drinking, but I don't know much about it's functions.

[PeteM]

Great images and description -- thanks for posting them.

[BramHuntingNematodes]

They look very good! Is the mouse going to be ok?

[tgss]

Thanks for the response Naphthalene. I have done a little research since reading your original post. Wikipedia for example has quite a good article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcommissural_organ. For an organ that has been identified for such a long time, is evolutionarily ancient, is created so early in the foetal development of the brain and is seemingly ubiquitous in mammals, it is amazing that so little seems to be known about its function.
Tom W

[Naphthalene]

Thank you for your replies, everyone!

BramHuntingNematodes, yes of course the mouse is okay. It juts took a little time off and departed for awhile

tgss, the lack of our understanding about this structure appears surprising to me too. However, when we start digging in any area of the modern science, very soon we face a big gap. For example, the histological stains are used routinely for more than a century. Yet the basic staining theory remains very shallow and the modern textbooks just keep telling over it is all about +/- charge attractions (a primitive story depicting the immoderate oversimplification). Both medics and scientists only pretend possesing a knowledge to keep their prestige