dead cell staining followed by fixation? - (Dec/12/2007 )

Hi all,
I would like to stain dead cells in their cell culture plate before to fix them. I know the ethidium homodimer from the LiveDead cell kit (Invitrogen) which stains dead cells but I have no idea if the stained cells can be fixed (and how?) and can keep the red fluorescence after the fixation step...
Does anyone have tried that or have another idea of a quick method of staining?
Thankyou for suggestions and good luck to all with experiments.

Not an expert by any means, but I am pretty sure it will negatively affect your ability to determine which cells were dead if you kill them....

One easy way to visualize dead cells in culture is to stain them with trypan blue. Don't know however if the trypan blue coloration can be fixed.

do you need to look at them? ie trypan blue style. teh best option, and you can take a photo of the slide.
or do you need to measure them? ie tunnel assay and run it through facs. very good an measuring apoptosis.

is it necessary that you fix them at all?

V

Before we do FACS on our cells we use the 7AAD dye (is also for live/dead cells) after that we fix and that seems to work...
Or maybe that's bec. it's not working?