We will also mention specimen preparation methods and describe interpretation of the images.
The use of focused ion beam microscopy in a wide range of materials science applications, including specimen preparation methods and in the generation of 3D visualisation is described.
Following the invention of the electron microscope in the early 1930s, what we would now call the "conventional" specimen preparation methods of chemical fixation, dehydration, plastic-embedding, sectioning, and staining were developed to allow the visualization of biological material.
It is typically used for specimens prepared by conventional or cryo-negative staining, and the obtained density maps can thus suffer from the artifacts associated with these specimen preparation methods.
These data show that the specimen preparation methods used to isolate the malignant cells from a patient's bone marrow aspirate are robust and not impacted by natural variations in specimen quality and relative quantity of malignant plasma cells.
Both methods have not yet been tested extensively and are not likely to always work, stressing the need for further developments of innovative specimen preparation methods for complexes that are labile and/or difficult to purify in large quantities.
Electron microscopes with helium-cooled top-entry specimen stages, such as the one developed by Fujiyoshi and co-workers (55), and improved specimen preparation methods, such as the carbon sandwich technique (56), have especially helped to improve the yield of high-resolution images.
Further application of direct detectors for data collection, combining with other image-processing algorithms, and improved specimen-preparation methods should bring other advances in the use of cryo-EM for structural virology.
Detailed notes and findings regarding specimen preparation, materials and methods are open-archived via the Drosophila Information Service: http://www.ou.edu/journals/dis/DIS90/Technique/Null.pdf This work was enabled by support from SMRL Director Prof. Joseph Puglisi.
This is not accomplished by the thin foils prepared by the conventional method of specimen preparation, and only cylindrical or conical-shaped specimens with the symmetry axis parallel to the tilting axis would meet this requirement.
