A bewildering number of choices of immunogold based labelling techniques confront electron microscopists. Some have been developed for use on heat or chemically cured resins, some for low temperature embedding strategies and others for use with unembedded, thawed cryo-sections. It is painfully obvious that methods need to be tailored to meet individual requirements.
Antigens differ vastly in their response to fixation, dehydration and embedding.
There are invariably compromises to be made between the contrasting requirements for the retention of antigenicity and the preservation of ultrastructure. I hope to demonstrate that by asking appropriate questions to the generators of antibodies ad undertaking simple pilot studies the choice of technique can be dramatically simplified. 2,6 sialytransferase is concentrated in the central cisternae of rat hepatocyte Golgi apparatus John Lucocq and Caroline Lovelock, Department of Anatomy and Physiology, University of Dundee. 2,6 sialyltransferase of rat hepatocytes to trans cisternae and Trans Golgi Network. We now report the use of combined stereological and immunoelectron microscopical techniques for mapping the Golgi stack composition and distribution of sialyltransferase protein in rat hepatocytes.