The key difference between fixation and stabilization is that fixation involves the rapid penetration of fixation reagent into tissues and fixing the tissues with existing biomolecular structure, whereas stabilization process involves the ending of fixation process and optimally protecting biomolecules for a long time period.
Fixation and stabilization are very important processes in biochemistry for tissue preservation and culturing requirements.
CONTENTS
1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Fixation
3. What is Stabilization
4. Side by Side Comparison – Fixation vs Stabilization in Tabular Form
5. Summary
What is Fixation?
Fixation is an analytical process by which the constituents of the cells and the tissues are fixed in a physical and partly chemical state in order to make them withstand subsequent treatments, including various reagents. In this process, the loss of reagents is minimum, and there is significant distortion or decomposition.
When a tissue is removed from the body, it tends to go through a process of self-destruction, which is known as autolysis. Therefore, if we leave this tissue without any preservation, a bacterial attack can take place (this is known as putrefaction). In order to avoid these processes, preservation and hardening of tissue samples are required, making sure to retain the same texture as live tissues as nearly as possible.
This technique is important to prevent autolysis and putrefaction, important for rapid and even penetration, for the preservation of cells and tissues in a live manner as possible, to stabilize labile elements, etc.
Figure 01: Tissue Preservation
There are various different methods we can use for fixation. This includes heat treatment, use of chemicals such as coagulants, etc. We can classify the most common chemical fixatives into several groups as aldehydes, oxidizing agents, protein denaturing agents, cross-linking agents, and miscellaneous.
Moreover, there are different factors that affect fixation, such as hydrogen ion concentration, temperature, penetration, osmolality, and concentration duration.
What is Stabilization?
Stabilization is an analytical process that is useful for stopping the fixation process and optimally protecting biomolecules for long term storage. Therefore, this process comes after the fixation step. With stabilizers such as PAXgene Tissue Stabilizer, we can protect our tissue sample for about 7 days at room temperature, and we can keep them up to 4 weeks at very low temperatures. If the temperature goes minus, then we can preserve the tissues even for several years.
Immediate stabilization of tissues is also important to preserve the in vivo profile of DNA< RNA and proteins. Most of the stabilizers we are using today are formalin-free preservations that give improved molecular results from fixed tissues.
What is the Difference Between Fixation and Stabilization?
Fixation and stabilization are important analytical techniques. The key difference between fixation and stabilization is that fixation involves the rapid penetration of fixation reagent into tissues and fixing the tissues with existing biomolecular structure, whereas the stabilization process involves the ending of the fixation process and optimally protecting biomolecules for a long time period. Moreover, fixation involves heat treatment methods and chemical methods (e.g. coagulant and non-coagulant chemicals) while stabilization involves freezing to low temperatures.
The following is a summary of the difference between fixation and stabilization in tabular form.
Summary – Fixation vs Stabilization
Fixation and stabilization are very important processes in biochemistry for tissue preservation and culturing requirements. The key difference between fixation and stabilization is that fixation involves the rapid penetration of fixation reagent into tissues and fixing the tissues with existing biomolecular structure, whereas the stabilization process involves the ending of fixation process and optimally protecting biomolecules for a long time period.
Reference:
1. “Preanalytix.com: Fixation and Stabilization.” Preanalytix, Available here.
Image Courtesy:
1. “Plant tissue cultures, National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation, USDA” By USDA, Lance Cheung – Flickr (Public Domain) via Commons Wikimedia