The high resolution and sensitivity of electron microscopy is still a valuable tool, and for some diseases it is the gold standard in pathological diagnosis. Today the sample turnaround time for processing in the lab can be significantly reduced from days to hours by the microwave technology. In urgent clinical cases, microwaveassisted tissue processing, in combination with digital image acquis...

Immunogold labeling is similar to conventional immunofluorescence techniques, generally used for light microscopy. However, immunogold electron microscopy provides investigators with an added dimension over the usual fluorescence assays, as the localization and distribution of macromolecules can be clearly observed at an ultrastructural level, at high magnifications, with high resolution. In ad...

Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) is an invaluable tool for biologists and neuroscientists to study brain structure at the intracellular level. While able to image tissue samples with up to 5 nm isotropic resolution, image acquisition is prohibitively slow and limits the size of processed samples. In this work, we propose a novel approach to speeding up imaging when looking for specific struct...

The essential details of cellular interactions at synaptic level in the brain are still largely unknown. In this issue, Kasthuri et al. report new experimental and computational technologies for large-scale electron microscopy data collection and analysis, and through saturated reconstruction uncover synaptic connectional specificity that cannot be predicted by simple axonal-dendritic proximity.

The high resolution and sensitivity of electron microscopy is a valuable ancillary tool or gold standard in pathological diagnosis. The conventional sample turnaround time for processing in the lab can be significantly reduced from days to hours by the microwave technology. Microwaveassisted tissue processing, in combination with digital image acquisition, enables a "same-day" diagnosis in urge...

remarkable similarities between various striated muscles. This is not surprising, for, as a rule, structural differentiations once having proven their effectiveness are usually preserved through phylogeny and ontogeny; already established structure-function complexes, instead of being replaced by a de novo alternative solution to an emerging physiological problem, tend to persist in a modulated...

Researchers have used transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to make contributions to cell biology for well over 50 years, and TEM continues to be an important technology in our field. We briefly present for the neophyte the components of a TEM-based study, beginning with sample preparation through imaging of the samples. We point out the limitations of TEM and issues to be considered during ex...

We present real-time, nanoscale temperature mapping using a transmission electron microscope and standard phase transitions in metal islands. Islands are deposited on the reverse side of commercially available silicon nitride membranes, while local thermal gradients are produced by Joule heating in a thin wire on the front side of the membrane. Change in contrast due to the liquid-solid transit...

The discovery of the electron over a century ago and the realization of its dual character have given birth to one of the two most powerful imaging instruments: the electron microscope. The electron microscope's ability to resolve three-dimensional (3D) structures on the atomic scale is continuing to affect different fields, including materials science and biology. In this Review, we highlight ...