Advise for Whole Cell Stain - hESC-differentiated Trophoblast (Feb/11/2011 )

Hi all, I am currently doing an experiment to observe cells area. In the protocol I use, there are nuclear and membrane staining. For nuclear I use HOECHST stain, for the membrane I use Invitrogen HCS Cells Mask, which stain the whole cells including nuclear. Does anyone of you have any suggestion if there is any dye that ONLY stain cells membrane but not nuclear?
Thank you so much for your kind help and advice.

Cheers...

margyn87 on Fri Feb 11 09:04:17 2011 said:

Hi there, I have been having similar problems with DiD (Invitrogen). It is also a membrane dye and is not meant to stain the nucleus. I have been doing some reading into this and have found that Trypan blue (usually used to test cell viability) accumulates around the membrane of live cells and is fluorescent under UV light. I am looking into using this in place of these cell membrane dyes that are not working. I am not sure though if it is an accepted method of cell membrane localisation.