To begin, prepare two milliliters of 4%formalin or any other appropriate fixative. Also keep a petri dish, forceps, and surgical scissors ready before starting the procedure. Place the properly euthanized cryoinjured fish in a petri dish containing deionized water.
Using scissors, perform a cut through the body, anterior and posterior to the caudal peduncle. Let the tissue bleed out in the deionized water inside the petri dish. Using forceps, collect and transfer the caudal peduncle into the prepared fixative solution in a microcentrifuge tube.
Carefully invert the tube several times. Before mounting, wash the fixed tissue in PBS for 10 minutes on a rocker. Then transfer it into a two-milliliter microcentrifuge tube containing a solution of 30%sucrose in deionized water, pre-cooled to four degrees Celsius and gently invert the tube several times.
Leave the tube upright at 4 degrees Celsius for at least 24 hours. Fill an embedding mold with a five-millimeter layer of OCT mounting medium. Using forceps, place the caudal peduncle at the bottom of the mold.
Adjust its orientation for either transversal or coronal sections. Let the medium freeze in a box of dry ice. As soon as the tissue is stabilized in the desired position, fill up the rest of the mold before the OCT completely freezes over.
Store the mold at 80 degrees Celsius for at least one hour before sectioning the tissue using a cryostat. The extent of cryoinjury at different days post-cryoinjury, or DPCI, was analyzed in the caudal peduncle sections using trichrome staining composed of Aniline Blue, Acid Fuschin, and Orange-G. The damaged areas were determined by the absence of orange staining.
At 4 and 7 dpci, the transverse section displayed extensively degenerated skeletal muscle in the cryoinjured flank of the body. Immunofluorescence analysis showed that, at 4 DPCI, the injured side of the caudal peduncle contained abundant DAPI-positive cells but little to no F-actin and tropomyosin 1, indicating degenerated muscles. At 7 dpci, tropomyosin 1 and F-actin could be detected in the wound, close to the vertical body midline, indicating the start of new myofiber formation.
At 30 dpci, both sides of the body displayed a similar distribution of F-actin staining, indicating efficient skeletal muscle restoration.
