Silver Acetate Autometallography: An Alternative Enhancement Technique for Immunogold-Silver Staining (IGSS) and Silver Amplification of Gold, Silver, Mercury and Zinc in Tissues

Abstract

Silver lactate autometallography in immunogold silver staining (IGSS) usually requires development in darkness to avoid excessive background staining. Our alternative method of silver enhancement of IGSS on paraffin sections from Bouin's or formalin fixed pancreas uses silver acetate in combination with hydroquinone in low pH buffer. The modification was tested with a range of antibodies in normal and diseased tissues (all routinely fixed and paraffin embedded), in acetone postfixed cryostat sections, and in semithin sections of glutaraldehyde fixed and resin embedded tissues. Silver acetate autometallography was also tested in various systems for the visualization of tissue metals like sulfides and selenides of mercury and zinc, silver, and gold. Comparisons between sections exposed to silver lactate and the silver acetate developer showed no significant difference in the number of structures stained. The degree of background staining was often lower when silver acetate was to used as the ion donor, especially with IGSS. The advantage the technique described here is that the development process can be controlled, using normal bright field light microscopy. (The J Histotechnol 11:213, 1988.)

Keywords:

• autometallography
• immunocytochemistry
• immunogold-silver staining
• silver enhancement
• metal visualization