The far-red fluorescing nuclear counterstain DRAQ5, widely used for live cell imaging and flow cytometry, has also been validated by many recent publications for a wide range of
fixatives, frozen and paraffin-embedded preparations. Due to remarkable spectral properties DRAQ5 is compatible with the widest range of visible range fluorophores allowing simultaneous and multi-parametric imaging. One striking example is the combination of a constitutively-expressed GFP-tagged protein in female donor cells, a Y-chromosome FISH Cy3-probe for
male recipient cells and DRAQ5 to demark the nuclei of all cells in mouse cardiac tissue sections (Visconti, 2006). Usefully, DRAQ5 works with a full range of fixatives including methanol, acetone, PFA, and PLP.