Imprinting as a rapid technique for assessing the morphology of the central nervous system by immunofluorescence

This paper describes a technique that has been developed to assess the in vivo morphology of central nervous system (CNS) tissue by immunofluorescence. This technique permits the study of tissue that is mainly just a monolayer of cells. Unlike routine cryosections that are much thicker (10–15 μm), imprinting does not section the cells, but can result in the detachment of whole cells onto a glass surface for subsequent staining. The imprinting technique is simple and rapid and does not require prior fixation or embedding of the tissue. It has been used to evaluate antigens expressed at the cell surface, in myelin and in the cytoskeleton in the studies of normal and myelin mutant mice. Using the imprinting/immunofluorescence technique one can now assay the genotype of mouse strains that differ in their expression of cell surface antigens within 2 h.