(Fe2+) iron in tissues. Briefly, fixed OHSCs were incubated in
10% ammonium sulfide solution (Sigma) for 90 min, followed by 20%
potassium-ferricyanide (Sigma) with 1% hydrochloric acid for 15 min and methanol
with 0.01 M NaN3 (Sigma) and 0.3% H2O2 (Sigma)
for 60 min (Kroner et al., 2014 (link)).
Sections were washed between incubations with PBS.
To detect ferric iron (Fe3+) in tissues, we used
3,3′-diaminobenzidine (DAB; Vector Laboratories,
Burlingame, CA)-enhanced Perls’ staining as previously described (Li et al., 2017b (link)) with slight modification.
Briefly, fixed OHSCs or sections of brain tissue were washed with PBS and
incubated in freshly prepared Perls’ solution (5% potassium ferrocyanide
[Sigma]/10% hydrochloric acid) for 1 h, followed by five PBS washes. After DAB
incubation for 3 min and hematoxylin (Sigma) counterstaining, iron deposition
was digitized and analyzed with Image J software.