Making dyes for stains, how do you?

[MustKnow]

I wanted to do some stains but i dont know where to track down some dyes. Can you make them at home or do you have to buy them? Was thinking if i could use food dye but i dunno.

[CharonY]

What kind of stains?

[MustKnow]

What kind of stains?

 

for viewing microbes of course

[CharonY]

Why of course, it could have been anything from proteins to T-shirts. That being said, I cannot think of a stain off-hand that you could home-brew. E.g just for counting purposes mostly DAPI is used or crystal violet for differential Gram stain. Also all that I can think of are somewhat toxic or carcinogenic, as they interact with various elements of the cell, including DNA.

[MustKnow]

Why of course, it could have been anything from proteins to T-shirts. That being said, I cannot think of a stain off-hand that you could home-brew. E.g just for counting purposes mostly DAPI is used or crystal violet for differential Gram stain. Also all that I can think of are somewhat toxic or carcinogenic, as they interact with various elements of the cell, including DNA.

 

where do you buy the dye at for the doing microbe stains? And how big of a difference is there from viewing an unstained to viewing a stained?

 

a screen shot would be nice.

[CharonY]

It depends a lot on the microscope. In a high-quality one, especially with phase contrast one can see them quite well without dyes. Dyes are bought from usual chemical suppliers.

[MustKnow]

how do u know if its a high contrast one? Mine came witha few color lenses not sure what those are for. I just had a petri dish with some agar i grew some weird stuff have no idea what it was. I was able to identify the molds pretty easily. Those molds/fungus made all kinds of spores when i opened the petri dish i got a big breath of the spores i hope i dont get sick now .

 

You know the bacteria that grow in the petri dish dont look clear cut like the pictures in a text book. All i saw was a bunch of globs of stuff i couldnt make out an nice circular cells just one big glob that seemed to be a single bacteria instead a colony of individual ones. On the outside of the big glob it had these little hooks that would grow out then turn back into the glob. I thought it was doing that to eat but it appeared thats what it was doing to grower larger because it didnt shrink it just got bigger.

 

I had some pond water that was a lot easier to see and make out. Could see the indviual cells and the figallens but that petri dish was more like a big train wreck.

[John Cuthber]

If you didn't pay for phase contrast you almost certainly didn't get it.

[MustKnow]

got to say for this being a forum for a bunch of egg heads you guys dont have much to say or offer. CharonY has been the only one to offer a post but with limited info .

 

How or Where do you get dye for staining microbes to view with my microscope.

[John Cuthber]

Well, this "Dyes are bought from usual chemical suppliers." from CharonY is the right answer.

What more would you like us to say?

[MustKnow]

where at?

[John Cuthber]

From your point of view, Ebay is probably the "usual chemical supplier".

Some red inks are based on eosin and some blue/ black inks are based on crystal violet, but I don't know how useful those dyes are as histological stains

[ivanp84]

There is many ways to stain microbe or tissue. You can use many common chemicals, for example coper sulphate, potassium permanganate, silver nitrate, then organic azo-dyes, indigo, eosin, fluorescein, ... For example, eosin very good binds to Gram positive bacterias and eosinophiles (lymphocytes), and you can buy eosin solution in pharmacy. I can suggest you this link for hobby microscopy:

http://www.scuddlebutt3.co.uk/MicroscopyStains.htm

 

You can find many interesting alternative stain methods in old histologies from the beginning of the 20th century. (German histology books at first place) Of course, you can experiment with any dye you can find; for example, you can make baking yeast culture, and then fixate cells on glass and try to dye after that...

Edited August 23, 2009 by ivanp84