Can Ethanol be replaced with 2-propanol (isopropanol) without changes in conventional tissue processing protocols? Will it work as well as ethanol does using classical dehydration protocols?
Yes it can be used to replace EtOH, but with changes to standard dehydration protocol. Depending on the size/type of your specimens you have to optimize the time in the graded Isopropanol. Since you do not say if your are working with human or animal tissue, carefully optimize the time for dehydration based on the size of the specimens. Very small samples can overharden, and fatty or larger specimens will need more dehydration. The isopropanol does not mix with paraffin, so you will need to use a clearant, such as xylene.
I know that ethanol can be substituted with methyl benzoate and it give better results
Why ? What for ? It may be useful for some special processing methods
Thanks!
We have a conventional linear automatic tissue processor. It seems to work equally well with 2-propanol. We have compared dehydration with ethanol and 2-propanol for both tissue processing and staining of section. 2-Propanol seems to perform equally well as ethanol. Actually we have some market shortage of good quality histology grade ethanol due to some government regulations so we had to switch to 2-propanol.
As others have said above ethanol and isopropanol are completely interchangable but I have found that with larger tissue sections, isopropanol can take a slightly longer time to fully impregnate the specimen. Because of this I add 10% increase in time for each of my isopropanol concentration series in comparison to my standard ethanol processing.
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