Mycobacterial Diseases
Open Access

Abstract

Localization of Mycobacterial Antigens by Immunofluorescence Staining of Agarose Embedded Cells

Andrea Vettiger, Nicole Scherr, Marie-Thérèse Ruf, Katharina Röltgen and Gerd Pluschke

Here we report the adaptation of an immunofluorescence staining method for mycobacterial antigens. Our approach is based on agarose embedding followed by thin sectioning of the bacterial samples. We demonstrate that this technique has great potential for protein localization studies, without the use of fluorescence tagged fusion proteins, which is of special interest for slow growing mycobacterial species.