The construction of a closed-chambered incubator for use in such techniques as enzyme and immunoperoxidase histochemistry.

Abstract

Many histochemical procedures, in an attempt to be as variable-free as possible, often require such a quantity of incubation solution that there is a resulting waste of expensive chemical substrates, coupling salts, antigens, etc. More economic procedures are justifiably ignored in histochemical studies because of their uncontrollable variables. However, the variables associated with one such economic procedure (the drop method) can now be eliminated by utilizing the closed-chambered incubator described in this paper. Slides containing tissue sections incubated in this apparatus need only 1 ml of incubation medium per slide to achieve a similar reaction product as tissue sections emersed in Coplin jars of medium. This incubator incorporates a water-bath circulator to heat and circulate water below a shelf containing the tissue sections. Within 0.5 h, the entire incubating chamber is saturated with a 310 K water vapour. The water vapour eliminates the primary variable of the drop method incubation, evaporation of the medium. This paper describes the construction of the incubator, its evaluation, the savings obtained from one simple histochemical procedure and its applicability in enzyme and the immunoperoxidase histochemical techniques.