Serial scanning electron microscopy of anti-PKHD1L1 immuno-gold labeled mouse hair cell stereocilia bundles

Abstract

Serial electron microscopy techniques have proven to be a powerful tool in biology. Unfortunately, the data sets they generate lack robust and accurate automated segmentation algorithms. In this data descriptor publication, we introduce a serial focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) dataset consisting of six outer hair cell (OHC) stereocilia bundles, and the supranuclear part of the hair cell bodies. Also presented are the manual segmentations of stereocilia bundles and the gold bead labeling of PKHD1L1, a coat protein of hair cell stereocilia important for hearing in mice. This depository includes all original data and several intermediate steps of the manual analysis, as well as the MATLAB algorithm used to generate a three-dimensional distribution map of gold labels. They serve as a reference dataset, and they enable reproduction of our analysis, evaluation and improvement of current methods of protein localization, and training of algorithms for accurate automated segmentation.