Lucifer Yellow stains a subpopulation of chicken retinoblasts preferentially 3 h after their last round of DNA synthesis.

Observations of histological preparations of E4-E6 retinae suggested to us that Lucifer Yellow (LY) uptake occurs during a specific phase of the mitotic cell cycle. We examined this phenomenon more closely in intact E6 retinae. If we first exposed the tissues to a 20-min pulse of tritiated thymidine followed by LY-staining at different intervals, a distinct peak of double-labelled cells was found 3 h after exposure of the tissue to thymidine. In contrast, if staining with LY is followed by thymidine pulses, only few double-labelled cells are found. We conclude that a subpopulation of young neurons takes up LY specifically after their last round of DNA-synthesis