Correlative video-light–electron microscopy of mobile organelles

Abstract

Correlative microscopy is a method when for the analysis of the very same cell or tissue area, several different methods of light microscopy (LM) and then electron microscopy (EM) are used consecutively. The combination of LM and EM allows researchers to study phenomena at a global scale and then to look for unique or rare events for their subsequent EM examination. Unfortunately, the observation of living cells under EM is still impossible. LM provides the possibility to examine quickly many live cells, whereas EM provides the high level of resolution. On the other side, the final goal of any morphological analysis of a biological sample, whether it is an organism, organ, tissue, cell, organelle, or molecule, is to get an averaged three-dimensional model of the structure examined and to determine the chemical composition of it. This chapter describes the methodology of imaging with the help of CVLEM. The guidelines presented herein enable researchers to analyze structure of organelles and to obtain the three-dimensional model of the structure examined, and in particular rare events captured by low-resolution imaging of a population or transient events captured by live imaging can now also be studied at high resolution by EM.