Reagent Grade Xylene

A world renowned clearing agent from a name your trust.

Reagent Grade Xylene is a world renowned clearing agent and unsurpassed in its ability to deparaffinize. It is a more highly refined and finer filtered version of Histo-Grade Xylene. Reagent Grade Xylene is a clear, colorless, and sweet-smelling liquid that is produced from crude oil through a process called alkylation. It consists of benzene and three aromatic hydrocarbon isomers: paraxylene, orthoxylene, and metaxylene. Reagent Grade Xylene is used for many different purposes in the field of Histology and Cytology, whether it is for coverslipping, deparaffinizing, or tissue processing.

One way Reagent Grade Xylene is used in a Histology lab is for preparing slides for coverslipping. When a slide is stained, it is usually in an aqueous state and slides cannot be coverslipped until completely dehydrated of water and removed of alcohol. Dehydrating the slide of water can be done by placing a stained slide into alcohol, in which the alcohol acts like a vacuum and sucks up all the water from the stained slide. Then to remove the alcohol, the stained slide is placed into Reagent Grade Xylene. After the alcohol is removed, the stained slide is ready to be coverslipped.

Reagent Grade Xylene is also used in Histology to deparaffinize paraffin-embedded tissue sections so they can be stained. To remove the paraffin, the slide is placed into Reagent Grade Xylene. Next, the slide is slowly hydrated to an aqueous state by placing it through a series of alcohols, starting at 100% to 95%, 80%, 70% and 50%. Finally, the slide is placed into water and then the deparaffinized slide is ready to be stained.

Lastly, Reagent Grade Xylene is used prior to infiltrating tissue by the process of clearing. In order to infiltrate a piece of tissue with paraffin, water and alcohol must be removed. The first step is to dehydrate the tissue that was fixed by using an aqueous fixative and placing it through a series of alcohols, starting at 50% to 70%, 80%, 95% and 100%. The next step is to clear the tissue from alcohol by using the most common clearing agent, Reagent Grade Xylene. Once this is complete, the tissue can be infiltrated with paraffin.

American MasterTech also offers a line of Xylene alternatives and replacements. Clearify, a Xylene alternative, is as powerful as Xylene, yet looks and smells like water. Clearify is also biodegradable, low-hazard, non-flammable, non-carcinogenic, non-sensitizing, and non-corrosive.

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