
The Histology team provides expert technical and collaborative services to Stowers scientists whose research calls for the microscopic anatomy of biological tissues and cells.
The Histology team serves Stowers researchers by implementing basic to molecular methods as well as developing new histotechnologies. The team’s focus is identifying cellular components of tissues and organs across a variety of organisms throughout development, regeneration, and disease states. Comprised of histotechnologists and scientists with backgrounds ranging from cytogenetics to neuroscience, the team provides customized collaborative research services, trains users on a variety of histotechniques, assists in selecting the best histological method for a given task, and conducts tissue processing, sectioning and staining.
Routine Histology
- Paraffin microtomy
- Cryotomy
- Vibratome sectioning
- Plastic sectioning
- H&E and special stains
Molecular Histology
- Immunohistochemical assay
- Traditional and single molecular in situ hybridization (ISH)
- Expansion microscopy
- Protein & RNA spatial profiling
- Yeast cytology, chromosome spread and Fiber FISH

Yongfu Wang graduated from the Southwest University in China with a bachelor’s degree in biology and earned his PhD in zoology from the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Following postdoctoral training at the University of Kansas (KU), he began an assistant research professor position at KU to study brain aging and neurodegenerative diseases. In 2015, he joined the Histology team at Stowers. Wang is interested in developing new histotechnologies that can be implemented in the foundational research done at Stowers. His work has been published in journals including Nature Protocols, Nature Communications, PNAS, Diabetes, Journal of Neuroscience, British Journal of Pharmacology, Cell, and Cell Research. Wang also serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Histotechnology.