Supravital staining

Thus a supravital stain may have a greater toxicity, as only a few cells need to survive it a short while.

As the cells are alive and unfixed, outside the body, supravital stains are temporary in nature.

[1][2] The most common supravital stain is performed on reticulocytes using new methylene blue or brilliant cresyl blue, which makes it possible to see the reticulofilamentous pattern of ribosomes characteristically precipitated in these live immature red blood cells by the supravital stains.

(Vital stains include dyes like trypan blue and propidium iodide, which are either too bulky or too charged to cross the cell membrane, or which are actively rapidly pumped out by live cells.)

[5] Although antibodies may be used in a similar way in this context, the term "supravital stain" is typically reserved for smaller chemicals which possess suitable properties intrinsically.

Supravital stain of a smear of human blood from a patient with hemolytic anemia . The reticulocytes are the cells with the dark blue dots and curved linear structures (reticulum) in the cytoplasm.