histology

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A stained histologic specimen, sandwiched between a glass microscope slide and coverslip, mounted on the stage of a light microscope.

Microscopic view of a histologic specimen of human lung tissue stained with hematoxylin and eosin.

Histology (compound of the Greek words: ἱστός "tissue", and -λογία -logia) is the study of the microscopic anatomy of cells and tissues of plants and animals. It is performed by examining a thin slice (section) of tissue under a light microscope or electron microscope. The ability to visualize or differentially identify microscopic structures is frequently enhanced through the use of histological stains. Histology is an essential tool of biology and medicine.

Histopathology, the microscopic study of diseased tissue, is an important tool in anatomical pathology, since accurate diagnosis of cancer and other diseases usually requires histopathological examination of samples. Trained medical doctors, frequently board-certified as Pathologists, are the personnel who perform histopathological examination and provide diagnostic information based on their observations.

The trained scientists who perform the preparation of histological sections are histotechnicians, histology technicians (HT), histology technologists (HTL), medical scientists, medical laboratory technicians, or biomedical scientists. Their field of study is called histotechnology.

Technical procedure

Fixation

Chemical Fixation with Formaldehyde or Other Chemicals

Chemical fixatives are used to preserve tissue from degradation, and to maintain the structure of the cells inclusive of sub-cellular components such as cell organelles (e.g., nucleus, endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria). The most common fixative for light microscopy is 10% neutral buffered formalin (4% formaldehyde in phosphate buffered saline). For electron microscopy, the most commonly used fixative is glutaraldehyde, usually as a 2.5% solution in phosphate buffered saline. These fixatives preserve tissues or cells mainly by irreversibly cross-linking proteins. The main action of these aldehyde fixatives is to cross-link amino groups in proteins through the formation of CH₂ (methylene) linkage, in the case of formaldehyde, or by a C5H10 cross-links in the case of glutaraldehyde. This process, while preserving the structural integrity of the cells and tissue can damage the biological functionality of proteins, particularly enzymes, and can also denature them to a certain extent. This can be detrimental to certain histological techniques. Further fixatives are often used for electron microscopy such as osmium tetroxide or uranyl acetate

Frozen Section Fixation

Frozen section is a rapid way to fix and mount histology sections. It is used in surgical removal of tumors, and allow rapid determination of margin (that the tumor has been completely removed). It is done using a refrigeration device called a cryostat. The frozen tissue is sliced using a microtome, and the frozen slices and mounted on a glass slide and stained the same way as other methods. It is a necessary way to fix tissue for certain stain such as antibody linked immunofluorescence staining.

Dehydration and infiltration

Biological tissue must be supported in a hard matrix to allow sufficiently thin sections to be cut, typically 5 μm (micrometres; 1000 micrometres = 1 mm) thick for light microscopy and 80-100 nm (nanometre; 1,000,000 nanometres = 1 mm) thick for electron microscopy. For light microscopy, paraffin wax is most frequently used. Since it is immiscible with water, the main constituent of biological tissue, water must first be removed in the process of dehydration. Samples are transferred through baths of progressively more concentrated ethanol to remove the water, followed by a clearing agent, usually xylene, to remove the alcohol, and finally molten paraffin wax which replaces the xylene. Paraffin wax does not provide a sufficiently hard matrix for cutting very thin sections for electron microscopy. Instead, resins are used. Epoxy resins are the most commonly employed embedding media, but acrylic resins are also used, particularly where immunohistochemistry is required. Thicker sections (0.35μm to 5μm) of resin-embedded tissue can also be cut for light microscopy. Again, the immiscibility of most epoxy and acrylic resins with water necessitates the use of dehydration, usually with ethanol.

Embedding

After the tissues have been dehydrated and infiltrated with the embedding material they are ready for embedding. During this process the tissue samples are placed into moulds along with liquid embedding material which is then hardened. This is achieved by cooling in the case of paraffin wax and heating in the case of the epoxy resins (curing). The acrylic resins are polymerised by heat, ultraviolet light or chemical catalysts. The hardened blocks containing the tissue samples are then ready to be sectioned.

Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissues may be stored indefinitely at room temperature, and nucleic acids (both DNA and RNA) may be recovered from them decades after fixation, making FFPE tissues an important resource for historical studies in medicine.

Embedding can also be accomplished using frozen, non-fixed tissue in a water-based medium. Pre-frozen tissues are placed into moulds with the liquid embedding material, usually a water-based glycol or resin, which is then frozen to form hardened blocks.

Sectioning

For light microscopy, a glass knife mounted in a microtome is used to cut 10-micrometer-thick tissue sections which are mounted on a glass microscope slide. For transmission electron microscopy, a diamond knife mounted in an ultramicrotome is used to cut 50-nanometer-thick tissue sections which are mounted on a 3-millimeter-diameter copper grid. Then the mounted sections are treated with the appropriate stain.

Frozen tissue embedded in a freezing medium is cut on a microtome in a cooled machine called a cryostat.

Staining

Biological tissue has little inherent contrast in either the light or electron microscope. Staining is employed to give both contrast to the tissue as well as highlighting particular features of interest. Where the underlying mechanistic chemistry of staining is understood, the term histochemistry is used. Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) is the most commonly used light microscopical stain in histology and histopathology. Hematoxylin stains nuclei blue; eosin stains the cytoplasm pink. Uranyl acetate and lead citrate are commonly used to impart contrast to tissue in the electron microscope.

Special staining: There are hundreds of various other techniques that have been used to selectively stain cells and cellular components. Other compounds used to color tissue sections include safranin, oil red o, Congo red, fast green FCF, silver salts, and numerous natural and artificial dyes that were usually originated from the development dyes for the textile industry.

Histochemistry refers to the science of using chemical reactions between laboratory chemicals and components within tissue. A commonly performed histochemical technique is the Perls Prussian blue reaction, used to demonstrate iron deposits in diseases like hemochromatosis.

Histology samples have often been examined by radioactive techniques. In historadiography a slide (sometimes stained histochemically) is X-rayed. More commonly, autoradiography is used to visualize the locations to which a radioactive substance has been transported within the body, such as cells in S phase (undergoing DNA replication) which incorporate tritiated thymidine, or sites to which radiolabeled nucleic acid probes bind in in situ hybridization. For autoradiography on a microscopic level, the slide is typically dipped into liquid nuclear tract emulsion, which dries to form the exposure film. Individual silver grains in the film are visualized with dark field microscopy.

Recently, antibodies are used to specifically visualize proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids: this is called immunohistochemistry, or when the stain is a fluorescent molecule, immunofluorescence. This technique has greatly increased the ability to identify categories of cells under a microscope. Other advanced techniques, such as nonradioactive in situ hybridization, can be combined with immunochemistry to identify specific DNA or RNA molecules with fluorescent probes or tags that can be used for immunofluorescence and enzyme-linked fluorescence amplification (especially alkaline phosphatase and tyramide signal amplification). Fluorescence microscopy and confocal microscopy are used to detect fluorescent signals with good intracellular detail. Digital cameras are increasingly used to capture histological and histopathological image

Common laboratory stains

Fungi—black

Table sourced from Michael H. Ross, Wojciech Pawlina, (2006). Histology: A Text and Atlas. Hagerstown, MD: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. ISBN 0-7817-5056-3. 

The Nissl method and Golgi's method are useful in identifying neurons.

Alternative techniques

Alternative techniques include cryosection. The tissue is frozen and cut using a cryostat. Tissue staining methods are similar to those of wax sections. Plastic embedding is commonly used in the preparation of material for electron microscopy. Tissues are embedded in epoxy resin. Very thin sections (less than 0.1 micrometer) are cut using diamond or glass knives. The sections are stained with electron dense stains (uranium and lead) so that they can possibly be seen with the electron microscope.

History

In the 19th century, histology was an academic discipline in its own right. The 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to histologists Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramon y Cajal. They had dueling interpretations of the neural structure of the brain based in differing interpretations of the same images. Cajal won the prize for his correct theory and Golgi for the staining technique he invented to make it possible.

Histological classification of animal tissues

There are four basic types of tissues: muscle tissue, nervous tissue, connective tissue, and epithelial tissue. All tissue types are subtypes of these four basic tissue types (for example, blood cells are classified as connective tissue, since they generally originate inside bone marrow).

• Epithelium: the lining of glands, bowel, skin and some organs like the liver, lung, kidney
• Endothelium: the lining of blood and lymphatic vessels
• Mesothelium: the lining of pleural and pericardial spaces
• Mesenchyme: the cells filling the spaces between the organs, including fat, muscle, bone, cartilage, and tendon cells
• Blood cells: the red and white blood cells, including those found in lymph nodes and spleen
• Neurons: any of the conducting cells of the nervous system
• Germ cells: reproductive cells (spermatozoa in men, oocytes in women)
• Placenta: an organ characteristic of true mammals during pregnancy, joining mother and offspring, providing endocrine secretion and selective exchange of soluble, but not particulate, blood-borne substances through an apposition of uterine and trophoblastic vascularised parts
• Stem cells: cells able to turn into one or several of the above types

Note that tissues from plants, fungi, and microorganisms can also be examined histologically. Their structure is very different from animal tissues.

Related sciences

• Cell biology is the study of living cells, their DNA and RNA and the proteins they express.
• Anatomy is the study of organs visible by the naked eye.
• Morphology studies entire organisms.

Artifacts

Artifacts are structures or features in tissue that interfere with normal histological examination. These are not always present in normal tissue and can come from outside sources. Artifacts interfere with histology by changing the tissues appearance and hiding structures. These can be divided into two categories:

Pre-histology

These are features and structures that have being introduced prior to the collection of the tissues. A common example of these include: ink from tattoos and freckles (melanin) in skin samples.

Post-histology

Artifacts can result from tissue processing. Processing commonly leads to changes like shrinkage, color changes in different tissues types and alterations of the structures in the tissue. Because these are caused in a laboratory the majority of post histology artifacts can be avoided or removed after being discovered. A common example is mercury pigment left behind after using Zenker's fixative to fix a section.

See also

• Pathology
• Anatomical pathology
• Histopathology
• Biological staining
• Digital Pathology
• Important publications in histology
• Geoffrey Bourne
• Laser capture microdissection

References

1. Merck Source (2002). Dorland's Medical Dictionary. Retrieved 2005-01-26.

2. Stedman's Medical Dictionaries (2005). Stedman's Online Medical Dictionary. Retrieved 2005-01-26.

3. 4,000 online histology images (2007). (http://histology-online.com)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Histology

• Histology Protocols
• Immunohistochemistry - In Situ Hybridization
• Histoweb
• SIU SOM Histology
• Visual Histology Atlas
• Histology Glossary
• Histology Group of Victoria Incorporated
• Histology Photomicrographs
• Virtual Slidebox
• Blue Histology
• Histology for Dummies (Spanish)