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b. (6pts) A diseased tissue is removed from a patient in surgery. The patient ha

ID: 192606 • Letter: B

Question

b. (6pts) A diseased tissue is removed from a patient in surgery. The patient has been extremely ill with something physicians cannot diagnose. The have asked you, the pathologist, to examine the specimen by microscopy to see if you can determine what is causing the disease. You choose to visualize the tissue in more detail using a light microscope to start. If you want to identify cell shape, cell nuclei and basic structures of the tissue, what staining approach could you start with? A. you employ to check for the presence of virus particles in the cells? Explain why you would have to use one microscopy approach over another B. If you hypothesize that a viral infection may be involved, what microscopy approach would

Explanation / Answer

A) I think the best staining approach to start with is H & E stain. H&E stain commonly called as Hematoxylin and Eosin stain is the common stain that is used in histology to veiw different components of a cell. It is a combination of both acidic and basic dyes. Hematoxylin is a basic dye which binds to acidic substances, ie; those with a negative charge ( DNA, RNA). Eosin on the otherhand is an acidic dye which binds to basic cellular components.ie; those components with positive charge.

Therefore this helps in in visualizing different compartments of a tissue in different colours like, nuclei in purple or blue, cytoplasm in red, muscles in dark red colour,mitochndria in pale pink etc.

B) According to me, an Electron microscope especially a Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) will be the best to detect the presence of viral particles. Electron microscope uses the same principle as that of an optical microscpe with the key difference that instead of light electrons beams are used.

To visualize viruses, TEM is best over other microscopes because primarily it offers good resolution and powerful magnification. TEM has a resolution of 0.2 nm that is sufficiently high for discrimination between the aggregated viral proteins and structured viruses (most viruses has size ranging from 20 to 300 nm). Hence it can be used for the initial identification of unknown viral particles.