Staining the Chick Embryo Vasculature

The Lens Culinaris Agglutinin is one of the few lectins, which efficiently bind to the vascular endothelium of the chick embryo. Immunofluorescent staining of chick embryo vasculature is important in developmental biology research and in cancer related studies involving the use of human tumor cells or tumor cells of any other species since chick embryo is a naturally immunodeficient host. The DyLight 649 Lens Culinaris Agglutinin is used to contrast chick embryo vasculature when tumor cells are tagged with a green fluorescein protein, e.g. GFP. This lectin is invaluable when tumor cells are tagged with a "conventional" red fluorescent protein (e.g., RFP) or when both red and green fluorescent dextrans are used simultaneously in vascular permeability studies. The image depicts the tumor-associated vasculature in a tumor that developed from Tomato-tagged prostate cancer cells grafted into a chick embryo.