The Electron Microscopy Core Facility is available to investigators wishing to define ultrastructural details in their experimental systems.
 
The electron microscopes:  1) the transmission electron microscope is a FEI Tecnai 12 Twin is equipped with a Gatan 894 Ultrascan 1000 CCD camera, cryo-stage/box, and tomography holder.  In addition to traditional images, single-tilt tomography series and low-dose exposure images of specimens frozen in vitreous ice can be collected; 2) the scanning electron microscope is a FEI Quanta 200 with environmental SEM capabilities.  Both microscopes are user-friendly and fully digital microscopes.  They can be operated by investigators following brief training.

Sample preparation: In addition to providing conventional ultra-thin resin sections, the facility provides ultra-thin sections of samples prepared by high pressure freezing in a LEICA EM PACT2 high pressure freezer then fixed and resin infiltrated at low temperature in a LEICA EM Automatic Freeze Substitution System.   Specimens prepared in this manner are suitable for immunogold labeling.  Immunogold labeling is available.  A fully automated vitrification device, the FEI Vitrobot Mark IV, for plunge-freezing of aqueous (colloidal) suspensions is available for preparing samples for particle analysis.  Other forms of sample preparation include negative staining and shadow replicas.  Work stations and software for particle analysis and tomographic reconstruction and visualization are available.

Please acknowledge these funding sources when publishing work derived from the EM Core:

• TEM - ONR N00014-02-1 0958
• SEM - DOD 1435-04-03GT-73134
• Cryo-Ultra Microtome - NSF DBI-9970143
• Vitrobot & Cryo-Stage - San Diego Construction Industries
• High Pressure Freezer and Freeze Substitution System - NIH 1S10RR025569-01

Microscopy Society of America
http://www.microscopy.org/

Virtual Library of Microscopy
http://www.ou.edu/research/
electron/www-vl/

Aurion – immunogold reagents
http://www.aurion.nl/

Nanoprobes, Inc. – 1.4 nm immunogold
http://www.nanoprobes.com/

House Ear Institute – techniques in Electron Microscopy
http://www.hei.org/research/
aemi/tec.html

Albert Einstein College of Medicine
http://www.aecom.yu.edu/aif/