A methenamine-silver staining technique for glomerular basement membranes in plastic-embedded renal tissue

A method is described for the staining of glomerular basement membranes of aldehyde-fixed, osmicated renal tissue embedded in Epon or Araldite. The procedure presented does not require chemical digestion of the polymerized Epon or Araldite matrix before application of the methenamine-silver technique. There is no divergence from the procedures for fixation and embedding for transmission electron microscopy (TEM). This enables sections from the same block of renal tissue to be examined both by light microscopy (LM) and TEM without loss of time or sacrifice of quality.