How to send coverslips across the world?

Probes & Prep
1

Hi,

Does any one have tips for sending 13 mm round coverslips with adhered cells that need to be stained in another lab ?

  • Mount them with non hardening media, seal them with nail varnish, send and unmount on arrival ?
  • Send in a 15 ml Falcon full of PBS (one coverslip per tube)?
  • Something else ?

Thank you

2

Hi,
we are currently trying something similar - our solution was to use contact lens cases (not my idea - I saw Christophe Leterrier (@christlet ) showing a picture on twitter). The cases are big enough for the coverslip to fit, but too low for it to flip over

I added a bit of NaN3 to the PBS, and in addition sealed them in.

We also tried to ship coverslips as small PBS-filled foil pouches -that also worked OK-ish.

Our EM people often remove mowiol from coverslips after confocal imaging for CLEM before embedding and EM prep by simply immersing the slides in buffer or water - that might also work, but I am not sure how good the staining would be afterwards.

Good luck and let us know what works

Kay

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3

Cool to see the lens cases trick being useful! We’ve used it for 12 mm and 18 mm round coverslips, sometimes between US and France, without problems. I recently presented this during the EuroBioImaging weekly webinar:

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