Another histology product, probably very similar if not identical to RCL2, is
'NOTOXhisto' by the US company at the link:
http://www.scientificdevice.com/product_pages/notox.htm
I bought some of this product to use on field specimens last year to try as a
last-minute substitute, when I found that acquiring a new supply of formalin
was going to be prohibitively difficult. It seemed to work adequately for
our purposes, at least in the short term... but then we don't do fine-anatomy
work, and my old-school biologist co-worker is skeptical of it.
I was wondering if anybody else out there had tried using NOTOXhisto on whole
specimens.
thanks much,
Chris Floyd
US Army Corps of Engineers
Anchorage, Alaska
-----Original Message-----
From: annelida-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu
[mailto:annelida-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu] On Behalf Of Geoff Read
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 6:02 PM
To: annelida mailing list
Subject: Re: [Annelida] formol vs RCL2
>>> On 20/03/2008 at 4:27 a.m., Stanislas DUBOIS
>>> <Stanislas.Dubois from ifremer.fr>
> For safety and health reasons, formaldehyde (formol) will be soon
> prohibited (at least in Europe .. I'm not sure for other countries).
> That might be problematic for specimen preservation since, as many of
> you I guess, I used to fix collected polychaetes from benthic samples
> in formaldehyde. I just learned that RCL2 might be of great interest
> to substitute for formol. Does anyone already experience this
> surrogate formol or does anyone has any information to share with me,
> as far as fixation quality of tissues for IDs (I'm not talking of
> doing any molecular analysis), preservation of pigments etc....
Thanks for the news Stan. My guess is that RCL2 has yet to spread far in the
medical world, and even less into general use.
The formulation is not public but contains acetic acid (vinegar). Perhaps
someone can find out how much more expensive it is compared to formalin,
bearing in mind that it's the medical/pathology market that they're selling
it into.
Those interested can check the company web page:
http://www.alphelys.com/site/us/pFF_FixateurSansFormol.htm
The paper of 2006 by Delfour et al that they cite, is available full text at
pubmed
"RCL2, a New Fixative, Preserves Morphology and Nucleic Acid Integrity in
Paraffin-Embedded Breast Carcinoma and Microdissected Breast Tumor Cells"
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/
just search for rcl2.
Yes, there is a general understandable reluctance of field workers to use
formalin these days. I dislike working with it also. But, I find the usual
substitute - ethanol - can result in rigid brittle specimens that are very
inferior to those formalin-fixed for morphology and identification, or in
disintegrating rubbish in bulk, sediment-laden samples.
Geoff
--
Geoff Read <g.read from niwa.co.nz>
http://www.annelida.net/http://www.niwascience.co.nz/ncabb/
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