The thermo-reversible mountant Cygel from Biostatus has been validated for imaging live parasites, demonstrated with Trypanosoma brucei and Leishmania major.
Cygel is said to have been proved quicker and simpler to use, with better reproducibility than agarose.
Parasites could be imaged for up to two hours with good viability and then recovered by cooling Cygel to re-liquefy it.
Cygel also acted as a carrier for a variety of fluorescent viability and organelle-specific probes that could not be used reliably with agarose.
Parasites were completely immobilised when using Cygel, allowing a full breadth of advanced microscopic techniques to further aid understanding of these pathogenic species.
