I would like to visually compare mitochondrial abundance/density across various tissue types. Can this be done with normal histology and a light microscope?
Dear Michael ,
You can quantify but it depend on which dye you are using.
there is nice review for this purpose by Tanji et al.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18929660/
If you can stain mitochondria with specific marker, you can easily count them. But best way to count them using TEM.
If only for visual identification and counting of mitochondria to compare density in differenet cells then it can be done by darkly stained light microscopy but have to exclude other membrane bound organelles of cell according to their position and staining characterstics. But if you want to compare strucrural quality (inner membrane and cristae) of mitochondria clearly, TEM better.
Dear Miachel,
you certainly could use specific mitochondrial stains, like Mitotracker etc, which are available from Thermo Fisher, Santa Cruz or Abcam. There are stains both for frozen sections and for paraffin embedded material.
Regards,
Daniela
The best way to quantify Mitochondria is through TEM, under LM also it is possible with special stain.
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