The role mitochondria play in mental disorders has been investigated using a wide array of experimental techniques ranging from imaging studies through ultrastructural methods to genetic and molecular means.
These descriptive studies have informed new studies, using established and new ultrastructural methods based on different principles, designed to investigate the possible role of RNA metabolism in secretory granules of human mast cells.
Ultrastructural methods can potentially answer how molecular interactions and spatial interactions contribute to the formation and function of junctional assemblies.
Conventional histological or ultrastructural methods typically take days or weeks before they yield first results, and the necessary preparations alter or may even destroy the specimen under study.
AM is the director of the Ultrastructural Methods for Innovative Anticancer Therapies Unit at the Department of Technology and Health of the ISS.
In support of roles related to synaptic functionality, DISC1 is highly enriched in postsynaptic density (PSD) fractions, and has been also shown to be present in dendritic spines by the use of ultrastructural methods (Kirkpatrick et al., 2006; Clapcote et al., 2007; Hayashi-Takagi et al., 2010; Carlisle et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2011; Paspalas et al., 2013).
The very idea of the tubular stem cell hypothesis is at odds with a long history of studies that examined tubule cells by ultrastructural and molecular methods, and never reported a minor population of 'different' cells in tubular segments.
First, advances in imaging and tissue preservation techniques have led to the development of methods and instrumentation for ultrastructural imaging that provide far more detailed and higher resolution views than was previously possible (Rostaing et al., 2004; Weimer, 2006; Muller-Reichert et al., 2008; Hall et al., 2012).
Frozen muscle sections were stained using standard histochemical and histoenzymatic methods, and when appropriate were selected for ultrastructural examination.
Finally, with the development of live cell imaging methods and correlative live cell imaging EM, a unique tool is provided to integrate dynamic parameters with ultrastructural protein localization studies, which opens a whole new field of analysis.
