Fibrinogen coupled to colloidal gold has proven to be a useful agent for probing the
glycoprotein IIb-IIIa receptor on human and bovine platelets at the ultrastructural
level. The reagent has helped to demonstrate fundamental differences in the reorganization
of the fibrinogen receptors on human and cattle platelets following surface activation.
However, commercial preparations of human fibrinogen have not yielded a stable reagent
in our hands when coupled to colloidal gold. The present study has substituted bovine
for human fibrinogen. Bovine fibrinogen gold proved to be a more stable reagent and
could be substituted for human fibrinogen gold in all experiments on human and bovine
platelets.
Keywords
GPIIb-IIIa - Fibrinogen binding - Electron microscopy - Gold labeling
