Frozen Mouse Brain Tissue Sectioning: A Procedure to Obtain Thin Frozen Tissue Sections from Frozen Murine Brain Tissue

To obtain cryosections or thin frozen tissue sections of a mouse brain, first, take a frozen block of mouse brain embedded in a suitable embedding medium. 

Transfer the frozen block to a cryostat chamber and allow the block’s temperature to equilibrate with the set temperature of the cryostat for subsequent sectioning procedure.

Then, use embedding medium to mount the frozen tissue block to the base of the cryostat specimen disc.

Place the specimen disc into the specimen head of the cryostat. 

Additionally, secure a blade in the blade holder of the cryostat.

Using the external handwheel, adjust the position of the specimen head to align the tissue block with the blade.

Once the tissue block and blade are correctly oriented, move the handwheel to initiate sectioning, trimming off the unwanted region of the tissue block that contains excess embedding medium.

As the frozen tissue block advances towards the fixed blade, it gets cut into slices of desired thickness.

Carefully transfer the sliced frozen tissue sections onto positively charged glass slides. The charged glass slides electrostatically attract the frozen tissue sections, facilitating their adhesion to the slide surface.  

Finally, store the sections at low temperatures until further analysis.