Identification of major cell types in paraffin sections of bovine tissues

BACKGROUND Identification of cell types in bovine tissue sections is complicated by the limited availability of anti-bovine antibodies, and by antigen retrieval treatments required for formalin-fixed tissue samples. We have evaluated an antibody and lectin panel for identifying major cell types in paraffin-embedded bovine tissue sections, and report optimized pretreatments for these markers. RESULTS We selected 31 useful antibodies and lectins which can be used to identify cell types of epithelia, connective tissue, muscle, and nervous tissue, as well as cell proliferation and apoptosis. CONCLUSION The panel of markers allows the identification of all major cell types in paraffin-embedded cattle tissue sections by immunohistochemistry or lectin histochemistry. Heat-induced epitope retrieval methods are required for most antibodies.