High Pressure Freezing for Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy

CryoCapCell

Vitrification since 2013

 

From a living cell to a CLEM dataset in 4 steps

Imaging has always been a central approach to understand functioning of biology. Since the discovery of the smallest unit of life by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the CELL, imaging technologies have constantly progressed to observe life processes at their closest distance.

Of the several tools available, light microscopy and electron microscopy take the high ground in all imaging approaches. The first one offers a unique chance to look at individual protein dynamics and localization in their hydrated native environment. The second is the method of choice to observe proteins in their contextual environment at near atomic resolution. It rapidly became essential to observe one unique sample with these two complementary techniques.

This is what Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy is aiming at: get most information possible from both techniques simultaneously on one precious biological sample. So essential that it got its own research field and crew of international experts: the CLEM, for Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy.

To achieve this, we propose to associate your fluorescence microscope with our world unique solution: the High Pressure Freezer Live µ. It allows you to achieve a <2s time correlation between live imaging and vitrification of thick sample (200µm) by high pressure freezing. Come and see us for a detailed overview of our capacities.

Step 1

Culture the cells

Step 2

Fluorescence Live Cell to High Pressure Freezing (HPF)

Step 3

From vitreous to Electron Microscopy data

Step 4

Data registration

Whether you are focusing on CLEM or on Volume EM, CryoCapCell has developped world unique tools to help you dive into biology.