Life Sciences Commons^™

Location And Identification Of Colloidal Gold Particles On The Cell Surface With A Scanning Electron Microscope And Energy Dispersive Analyzer, Sinikka Eskelinen, Raija Peura

Scanning Microscopy

The use of colloidal gold particles for locating cell surface components by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has been restricted due to difficulties in the identification of these gold particles under SEM. It is shown here how the gold particles bound to cell surfaces can be located and identified under SEM using the secondary electron imaging (SEI) mode with an energy dispersive X-ray microanalyzer (EDS). This enables reliable identification of gold particles and good quality micrographs of the cells to be achieved at the same time. The distribution of receptors for two lectins, concanaval in A (ConA) and wheat germ agglutinin …

Preparation Of Cultured And Isolated Cells For X-Ray Microanalysis, K. Zierold, D. Schäfer

Scanning Microscopy

Various electron microscopical preparation techniques are compared with regard to the preservation of the intracellular element distribution as determined by X-ray microanalysis in scanning and scanning transmission electron microscopy. By use of chemical agents for fixation and dehydration ions are redistributed and washed out. This is also true for freeze-substitution. Whole cells are prepared by cryofixation followed by freeze-drying. Interference of intracellular measurements by extracellular elements can be avoided by appropriate washing the cells before cryofixation. The washing medium has to be carefully selected in order to avoid distortions of the original intracellular element content. These problems are circumvented by …

Intracellular Water Distribution And Aging As Examined By X-Ray Microanalysis, Thomas Von Zglinicki

Scanning Microscopy

The results reviewed here demonstrate that 1. the distribution of dry mass as observed in frozen-dried cryosections might be used as an unbiased measure of intracellular dry mass resp. water distributions in the tissue in vivo and 2. the well-known loss of water from cells during aging is solely due to a water loss from mitochondria without changes in the water content of all other components of the cell in the case of rat liver and heart muscle.

The reason for the water loss might be increased counter ion binding by membrane-bound enzymes due to decreased fluidity of the inner …