I am trying to visualize the cranium vault morphology of 1mo old zebrafish stained with alizarin red. I tried just to dissect the cranial vault with a razor blade, however, I crushed the entire craniofacial skeleton. Thinking to use a microtome for this purpose. I would be very grateful if anyone can share some tricks with me before I crush every stained fish.
A "successful dissection" depends on your goals. Do you want to physically separate individual bones, such as the frontal and parietal? If so, a whole-mount stained specimen can be dissected under a microscope using small, sharp needles such as bent insect pins. Or do you want to see a cross-section? In that case you will need to first embed the entire skull in paraffin or plastic, then section and stain:
Article The Morphogenesis of Cranial Sutures in Zebrafish
Dear Elizabeth E LeClair , Thank you for your reply. Yes, I want to separate physically the whole cranium vault (as exactly shown in this paper Fig.1D) to see the morphology of frontal, parietal, and supraoccipital, not cross-section. Mine efforts with needles did not work well.
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