Fluorescence microscopy of GFP-tagged proteins is a fundamental tool in cell biology, but without seeing the structure of the surrounding cellular space, functional information can be lost. Here we present a protocol that preserves GFP and mCherry fluorescence in mammalian cells embedded in resin with electron contrast to reveal cellular ultrastructure. Ultrathin in-resin fluorescence (IRF) sections were imaged simultaneously for fluorescence and electron signals in an integrated light and scanning electron microscope. We show, for the first time, that GFP is stable and active in resin sections in vacuo. We applied our protocol to study the subcellular localisation of diacylglycerol (DAG), a modulator of membrane morphology and membrane dynamics in nuclear envelope assembly. We show that DAG is localised to the nuclear envelope, nucleoplasmic reticulum and curved tips of the Golgi apparatus. With these developments, we demonstrate that integrated imaging is maturing into a powerful tool for accurate molecular localisation to structure.
SummaryARC (accumulation and replication of chloroplasts) genes control different aspects of the chloroplast division process in higher plants. In order to establish the hierarchy of the ARC genes in the chloroplast division process and to provide evidence for their speci®c roles, double mutants were constructed between arc11, arc6, arc5, arc3 and arc1 in all combinations and phenotypically analysed. arc11 is a new nuclear recessive mutant with 29 chloroplasts compared with 120 in wild type. All the phenotypes of the double mutants are unambiguous. ARC1 downregulates proplastid division but is on a separate pathway from ARC3, ARC5, ARC6 and ARC11. ARC6 initiates both proplastid and chloroplast division. ARC3 controls the rate of chloroplast expansion and ARC11 the central positioning of the ®nal division plane in chloroplast division. ARC5 facilitates separation of the two daughter chloroplasts. ARC5 maps to chromosome 3 and ARC11 and ARC6 map approximately 60 cM apart on chromosome 5.
Cell imaging often relies on synthetic or genetic fluorescent labels, to provide contrast which can be far from ideal for imaging cells in their in vivo state. We report on the biological application of a, label-free, high contrast microscopy technique known as ptychography, in which the image producing step is transferred from the microscope lens to a high-speed phase retrieval algorithm. We demonstrate that this technology is appropriate for label-free imaging of adherent cells and is particularly suitable for reporting cellular changes such as mitosis, apoptosis and cell differentiation. The high contrast, artefact-free, focus-free information rich images allow dividing cells to be distinguished from non-dividing cells by a greater than two-fold increase in cell contrast, and we demonstrate this technique is suitable for downstream automated cell segmentation and analysis.
The ongoing progress in fluorescence labeling and in microscope instrumentation allows the generation and the imaging of complex biological samples that contain increasing numbers of fluorophores. For the correct quantitative analysis of datasets with multiple fluorescence channels, it is essential that the signals of the different fluorophores are reliably separated. Due to the width of fluorescence spectra, this cannot always be achieved using the fluorescence filters in the microscope. In such cases spectral imaging of the fluorescence data and subsequent linear unmixing allows the separation even of highly overlapping fluorophores into pure signals. In this chapter, the problems of fluorescence cross talk are defined, the concept of spectral imaging and separation by linear unmixing is described, and an overview of the microscope types suitable for spectral imaging are given.
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