In a new paper published online in Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology by scientists from the University of York, UK, the thermo-reversible mountant CyGEL™ (www.biostatus.com) has been validated for imaging live parasites, demonstrated with Trypanosoma brucei and Leishmania major.
CyGEL™ proved quicker and simpler to use, with better reproducibility than agarose. Parasites could be imaged for up to 2 hours with good viability and then, uniquely, recovered by cooling CyGEL™ to re-liquefy it. CyGEL™ also acted as a carrier for a variety of fluorescent viability and organelle-specific probes that could not be used reliably with agarose.
Using CyGEL™, parasites were completely immobilised allowing a full breadth of advanced microscopic techniques to further aid understanding of these pathogenic species.
Reference: Helen P. Price, Lorna MacLean, Joanne Marrison, Peter J. O’Toole, Deborah F. Smith, Validation of a New Method for Immobilising Kinetoplastid Parasites for Live Cell Imaging, Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology (2009), doi:10.1016/j.molbiopara.2009.09.008
