Abstract
In life sciences, an increasing number of techniques allow researchers to obtain as much data as possible from biologic specimens. One of the major problems of effective tissue preservation is to retain good tissue morphology and to preserve the nucleotide (DNA/RNA) and protein content of a sample. Effective methods to preserve these products are available; however, their multipurpose application is limited. With the recent introduction of the formaldehyde-releasing agent dimethyldimethylolhydantoin (DMDM-Hydantoin) as an alternative in tissue preservation we were interested in its ability to preserve the RNA and proteins of tissue samples. To test the effect of fluid preservatives on proteins, we used tissue of transgenic embryonic mice that express the β-galactosidase enzyme. Total RNA was isolated with TRIzol® (Invitrogen, Breda, The Netherlands) reagent to analyze the effect of the preservation on RNA. The effectiveness of DMDM-Hydantoin (5%) was tested against more widely used preservatives including 2%, 4%, and 8% paraformaldehyde (PFA), acetic acid/ethanol (HAC/EtOH), 70% ethanol (EtOH), and cryopreservation (Merck Neo-Fix®; Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany). From these experiments we conclude that DMDM-Hydantoin, in contrast to all other agents tested, has a potential to preserve tissue for multipurpose sample analysis that requires high quality mRNA, enzyme activity, or protein content.
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