Hi,
Could anyone suggest me a dye that works specifically for the intestine (preferably not fluorescent)? Does anyone have any experience using common food dyes?
Cheers
J
I’ve never used any of them, but maybe one of the fat dyes? Sudan Black, say?
Hi,
you could use a vital dye such as Nile blue to stain the OP50 and then feed the worms with the stained bacteria? You need to play around with the protocol, but it’s an alternative to fluorescent solutions such as FITC or more specific dyes such as Sudan Black.
In water Nile Blue has Ex 635nm / Em 674nm and although this will change some once it’s released into the weakly acidic intestine, you should still see a clear separation in combination with gfp for example.
Steve
Thank you! This would help!
I remember working with neutral red and getting fantastic staining around the intestine. Only issue is that it is fluorescent as well as a non fluorescent marker.
Evans blue might work also it would stain the gut while not getting into surrounding tissue as it can’t penetrate viable cell membrane.
Either could be administered by simply incubating the worm in solution they are not toxic to the worms. Actually just to clarify when you say stain the intestine
do you mean to permanently stain the walls of the intestine with a dye or would it suffice to simply fill the intestine with a colored solution so that it’s outline is clearly visible?
as if its the latter case leaving the worms swimming in a commercial food dye would probably be sufficient as long as you can conduct your study before they purge themselves.
Yes, that’s what I decided, using a food dye (FD&C #1) might be helpful as you suggested! Actually I cannot use a fluorescent dye considering the robust nature of my experiment. And I do not want to stain the intestine
permanently. I really appreciate the help.
Cheers