Temperatures above 37 deg C?

hydrazine

Is it okay if the temp gets above 37 degrees during the embedding step? I can find any mention about slightly higher temps.

Adam

I've polymerised at 42 deg before (I didn't check the water bath first), and it seemed to work fine, just slightly quicker. Can't tell you anything about the quality of the resulting hydrogel though.

rchurt

As I understand it, there's no problem with polymerizing at higher temps per se (within reason), but if you let it polymerize for the same amount of time at a higher temp as you would at a lower temp, you'll end up with a more rigid and less porous hydrogel. That can be good if you have a small or fragile sample that you're afraid will disintegrate during clearing, but it's bad if you have a large sample like a whole mouse brain that will take considerably longer to clear if the gel is less porous. So my suggestion would be to use a shorter polymerization time if you're using a higher temperature, all other things being equal.