Applied Electron Microscopy in Neuroscience

Wired posted a very interesting article on applied electron microscopy in the field of neuroscience.  The scientists chopped up a healthy rabbit’s eye and one that was damaged.  They imaged, via TEM, the retinas on each in order to compare the two.  This may give them insight into the causes and condition of blindness at the neuronal level.  Each retina had been prepped and sectioned and then imaged at 5,500x magnification.  The scientists then created a program to stitch these images together to create one huge image (think Google Earth). Their research article can be found here.

One thing they didn’t explain in their research article was their specimen prepping techniques.  It would seem that to create a huge mosiac of thousands of images, each section taken from the specimen block would need to be perfect.  It wouldn’t seem like there would be much room for error in either the preparation or the sectioning.  If you have worked on an ultramicrotome at all, you know how easy it is to completely destroy a block.  Also interesting was that they were using a glass knife on the ultramicrotome instead of a diamond.  While the glass knives can be nearly as sharp, they are definitely not consistent.  A good diamond knife though (upwards of $3,000) will be consistent with every cut, anywhere on the blade, and there is no need to worry about dulling.

All in all, a very cool article that is a good indicator of what the future holds for both neuroscience and microscopy.  With further advances in automation (a la Paul Allen Institute possibly) I imagine that we’ll have whole areas of the brain mapped out by a similar method.

Explore posts in the same categories: Electron Microscopy (general), Neuroscience, Transmission Electron Microscope

Tags: brain, diamond knife, electron microscope, glass knife, microscopy, Neuroscience, Paul Allen Institute, TEM, Wired

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