Correlative stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy and electron microscopy.

Doory Kim, Thomas J Deerinck, Yaron M Sigal, Hazen P Babcock, Mark H Ellisman, Xiaowei Zhuang

Index: PLoS ONE 10(4) , e0124581, (2015)

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Abstract

Correlative fluorescence light microscopy and electron microscopy allows the imaging of spatial distributions of specific biomolecules in the context of cellular ultrastructure. Recent development of super-resolution fluorescence microscopy allows the location of molecules to be determined with nanometer-scale spatial resolution. However, correlative super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and electron microscopy (EM) still remains challenging because the optimal specimen preparation and imaging conditions for super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and EM are often not compatible. Here, we have developed several experiment protocols for correlative stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM) and EM methods, both for un-embedded samples by applying EM-specific sample preparations after STORM imaging and for embedded and sectioned samples by optimizing the fluorescence under EM fixation, staining and embedding conditions. We demonstrated these methods using a variety of cellular targets.