Research Highlight

Serial Block-Face Scanning Electron Microscopy at the 2010 Microscopy and Microanalysis Meeting

August 2010 — At the 2010 Microscopy and Microanalysis meeting in Portland, Oregon, NCMIR scientists presented their work "Enhancing Serial Block-Face Scanning Electron Microscopy to Enable High Resolution 3-D Nanohistology of Cells and Tissues," a collaboration with researchers Roger Tsien's laboratory at UCSD. Serial block face scanning electron microscopy is a new method that allows for the automated image acquisition of relatively large volumes of tissue at near nanometer-scale resolution using scanning electron microscopy. At the meeting, they described a newly developed heavy metal staining protocol that dramatically improves the contrast and resolution obtainable by this method. The work was a recipient of a Professional/Technical Staff Award presented by the Microscopy Society of America.

A detailed protocol for preparing tissue can be obtained here: http://ncmir.ucsd.edu/sbfsem-protocol.pdf