Table 3.

A comparison of the minimal times necessary for signal saturation from the experiments with acrylic resin embedded and sectioned cells

Experiment	EX/+ BrdUTP	EX/+ biotin-dUTP, + BrdUTP
LR, + BrdUTP	1
LR, + biotin-dUTP, + BrdUTP	1.1 ± 21.3	1
LR, – all	26.3 ± 22.3	3.4 ± 19.8
LR, − oligo, + BrdUTP	27.6 ± 25.3
LR, − oligo, + biotin-dUTP, + BrdUTP	25.6 ± 21.3	1.6 ± 21.9
LR, + biotin-dUTP, + dTTP		1.5 ± 19.6
LR, − oligo, + BrdUTP → − oligo, + biotin-dUTP, + BrdUTP	25.9 ± 21.1	3 ± 22.2
LR, – oligo → − oligo, + biotin-dUTP, + BrdUTP	29 ± 24.2	1.8 ± 17.9
LR, − oligo, + hexanucleotide, + BrdUTP	3.6 ± 21.8
LR, + BrdUTP, + oligo dA15	27.9 ± 18.6
HPF	0.3 ± 20.6
HPF, + BrdUTP, + oligo dA15	26.9 ± 16.4

The table compares the minimal times necessary for the saturation of signal in any region of the acquired image. In the column ‘Experiment’, the changes in the composition of the RM are indicated for the individual experiments. ‘+’ means an addition of the mentioned component, whereas ‘−’ means an omission of the mentioned component with respect to the RM shown in Table 1 without dTTP and biotin-dUTP. An arrow indicates two consecutive experiments. The cells were fixed in 8% formaldehyde and embedded in LR white (designated as ‘LR’) or processed by HPF followed by FS and embedded in Lowicryl HM20 (designated as ‘HPF’). In the second column, the ratio between the minimal time necessary for signal saturation after BrdU detection in that experiment and in the experiment designated as ‘LR, +BrdUTP’ is indicated. The mean value and standard deviation (%) are provided. A similar value is shown in the third column for the biotin signal. In this case, we have related the signal after biotin detection in the experiment to the biotin signal from the experiment designated as ‘LR, + biotin-dUTP + BrdUTP’.