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An update on the Golgi staining technique improving cerebellar cell type specificity

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Abstract

The detailed morphological characterization of single cells was a major breakthrough in neuroscience during the turn of the twentieth century, enabling Ramon y Cajal to postulate the neuron doctrine. Even after 150 years, single cell analysis is an intriguing goal, newly motivated by the finding that autism might be caused by intricate and discreet changes in cerebellar morphology. Besides new single labelling technologies, the Golgi staining technique is still in use due to its whole cell labelling characteristics, its superior contrast performance over other methods and its apparent randomness of staining cells within a whole tissue block. However, the specificity and whole cell labelling of Golgi staining are also disputed controversially, and the method still has a poor reputation for being time consuming and needing high expenditures. We demonstrate here, how a classical Golgi technique can be adapted for staining different cerebellar cell types using a time-saving and efficient protocol, enabling the identification of the detailed morphological characteristics of single cells.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to Stefanie Ramrath and Sabine Molly-Klumbies for their excellent technical help, and Daniela Krauss and Narziss Haias for providing animal husbandry. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Grant GZ: INST1172/37-1FUGG (to SLB).

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  1. N. Czechowska and A. van Rienen contributed equally to this work.

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  1. Institute of Anatomy, Anatomy and Cell Biology, University of Bonn, Nussallee 10, 53115, Bonn, Germany

    N. Czechowska, A. van Rienen, F. Lang, B. Eiberger & S. L. Baader

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  1. N. Czechowska
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Correspondence to S. L. Baader.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest, commercial or non-commercial. All applicable international, national and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed (see “Materials and methods” section for details). This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

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Czechowska, N., van Rienen, A., Lang, F. et al. An update on the Golgi staining technique improving cerebellar cell type specificity. Histochem Cell Biol 151, 327–341 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00418-018-01766-0

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