Micron and Microscopica Acta最新文献

In conclusion the present study has demonstrated the localization of 3 receptors for endocytosis in rat renal proximal tubule cells. The three receptors are located in the membranes of the vacuolar compartment involved in endocytosis in these cells and in addition in dense apical tubules responsible for membrane recycling in the proximal tubule.

Differential distribution of some elements have been detected in the cortex and medulla of the camera type eye-lens in a fresh water fish, Notopterus sp., using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. This unique pattern of elemental distribution explains the less understood mechanism by which the optical properties of different parts of the fish lens are altered continuously and differentially during growth. The study also suggests the possible optical roles of some elements in ocular refractive structures.

Experimentally determined point-spread functions (PSF) have been used routinely for reconstructions of three-dimensional (3-D) microscopic objects from optical sections (Agard et al., 1989, Meth. Cell Biol., 30: 353–377; Fay et al., 1986, Opt. Meth. Cell Physiol., 40: 51–63). The microscope's PSF is usually measured by imaging a small fluorescent bead. There is a tradeoff in this measurement: very small beads are dim and bleach rapidly, while larger beads are a poorer approximation to a point source.

We have simulated the effect of the bead's size on the shape of the PSF by convolving a theoretically determined PSF (of a 40 × 1.0 N.A. oil-immersion lens) with spheres of varying diameters. Simulated data were generated with a 3-D phantom and the theoretical PSF, which is defined to be the ‘true’ PSF for the simulation. Reconstructions of the phantom were obtained with each of the theoretical PSFs obtained from the beads using a regularized linear least-squares method (Preza et al., 1992, J. Opt. Soc. Am., 9: 219–228). Results show a significant drop (more than 50%) in the signal-to-noise ratio of the reconstructions for beads with diameter large than 0.22 μm. These results suggest that the bead used in the PSF measurement should have a diameter less than 30% of the diameter of the first dark ring of the infocus two-dimensional (2-D) PSF. This study quantifies the tradeoff between the quality of the reconstructions and the bead size used in the PSF measurement.

When a positively charged ion beam is used to bombard a solid target, most of the atoms are displaced and sputtered according to the atomic sputtering theory. In the case of biological specimens, most of the bond-breaking molecules in proteins are removed, when based on the molecular sputtering theory. It was found that the thinning rate for solids and the etching rate for biological specimens, when prepared by a normal double fixation and staining method, can be measured from the sputtering yield and density of the specimens. It was also found that the thinning and etching rates depend on the removal weight per sublimation energy and bonding energy, respectively. The angular distribution of sputtering yield, its dependence on incident angle and the secondary electron emission yield were measured, and the optimum etching condition of the incidence was obtained. Experiments showed that the in situ observation of intracellular structures of biological specimens prepared by ion beam etching can be a very effective method in electron microscopy.