Scanning Electron Microscopy for the Life Sciences

Heide Schatten

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780521195997
• eBook ISBN:
  9781139847513
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Materials Science
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Recent developments in scanning electron microscopy (SEM) have resulted in a wealth of new applications for cell and molecular biology, as well as related biological disciplines. It is now possible to analyze macromolecular complexes within their three-dimensional cellular microenvironment in near native states at high resolution and to identify specific molecules and their structural and molecular interactions. New approaches include cryo-SEM applications and environmental SEM (ESEM), staining techniques and processing applications combining embedding and resin-extraction for imaging with high resolution SEM, and advances in immuno-labeling. New developments include helium ion microscopy, automated block-face imaging combined with serial sectioning inside an SEM chamber, and Focused Ion Beam Milling (FIB) combined with block-face SEM. With chapters written by experts, this guide gives an overview of SEM and sample processing for SEM and highlights several advances in cell and molecular biology that greatly benefited from using conventional, cryo, immuno and high-resolution SEM.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Endorsements
• Contributors
• 1 The role of scanning electron microscopy in cell and molecular biology: SEM basics, past accomplishments, and new frontiers
• 2 Corrosion casting technique
• 3 Revealing the internal structure of cells in three dimensions with scanning electron microscopy
• 4 Mitochondrial continuous intracellular network-structures visualized with high-resolution field-emission scanning electron microscopy
• 5 Is the scanning mode the future of electron microscopy in cell biology?
• 6 High-resolution labeling for correlative microscopy
• 7 The use of SEM to explore viral structure and trafficking
• 8 High-resolution scanning electron microscopy of the nuclear surface in Herpes Simplex Virus 1 infected cells
• 9 Scanning electron microscopy of chromosomes: structural and analytical investigations
• 10 A method to visualize the microarchitecture of glycoprotein matrices with scanning electron microscopy
• 11 Scanning electron microscopy of cerebellar intrinsic circuits
• 12 Application of in vivo cryotechnique to living animal organs examined by scanning electron microscopy
• 13 SEM in dental research
• 14 SEM, teeth, and palaeoanthropology: the secret of ancient human diets
• Index