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Compiled by: Julian
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Preparation of Samples for TEM
N.B. Project Planning: There are some general
points you should consider carefully before investing a lot of time and
effort in an EM experiment (or expecting me to invest.....!):
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Have you chosen the right specimen/part of specimen for your experimental
hypothesis? If there is a choice then use one which is easily-available,
easy to prepare, etc. |
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The age of the specimen, elapsed time after treatment (or time-course points)
need to be considered. |
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Do you need to prepare control specimens (i.e. apart from any controls
you may have to carry out subsequent to preparation, such as for immunogold
labelling)? For example, healthy (untreated) specimens to compare with
treated. |
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Especially if you are going to carry out any quantitative work (morphometry
[assessment of amounts of particular organelles] or immunogold localisations)
how many different tissue pieces from how many different individual animals/plants
do you need for your results to be significant? Bear in mind that replication
at the level of the individual plant or animal is critical (examination
of many different areas from one individual specimen is not acceptable). |
And finally:
Question: Are you interested purely in examining
the ultrastructure of your sample or do you wish to localise any specific
tissue proteins by immunogold labelling (if you have the relevant antibody!)?
Answer:
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