Wanted: non-toxic, non-fluorescent viability assay - (Mar/28/2011 )

Hi people,

to keep it short: I'm searching for a non-toxic viability assay, which interferes as slightly as possible with cellular functions.
What I basically want to do is: I want to check cells in a tissue preparation for viability (and there will be a high number of dead cells which cannot be reduced), pick the living cells (probably with LCM) and subsequently analyze them. For the analysis, it is crucial that the cells have been verified to be alive (another such verification step is planned after the picking). I therefore need a simple viability assay (a dye exclusion assay à la trypan blue without the toxicity of TB would be more than enough), which allows me to discriminate living from dead cells and which is as non-toxic/non-interfering as possible. Since the fluorescence lamp of our LCM is nonfunctional at the moment, a non-fluorescent assay would be best. I know that there aren't that many options since most dyes are genotoxic/cytotoxic. But maybe someone here has some kind of insider's tip.

Thanks in advance!
Myschkin

The prestoblue from invitrogen (cat# A-13261) is a best option. that can be read as a fluroscence or absorbance and is not cytotoxic to the cells.