How can you determine the relative abundances of different formations in an electron microscope?

Question

Sorry for the technical question but does anyone out there work on EMs.

Basically I work on a protein which has two different conformations (which can be distinguished under an EM) I just need a way of describing the abundances of them beyond 'there looks like theres more x than y'. So I can put some numbers to my data.

Does anyone know if there is a standard technique for this out there? And what it would be called so I can do a proper PubMed search (or even better a citation). Ahhh There's never anyone in the EM section when I need them.

Thanks

Answer 1

There is no way to do an accurate qualitative assessment while you are looking at the specimen visually. However, if you photograph the specimen digitally, or photograph it on a negative and scan it into the computer, there are image analysis programs like NIH Image or IP Lab which can do very precise quantitative analysis on such images.

Or you can do it the "poor man's way", using standard printed photographs, or computer printouts. Trim the white edges off your photograph, then weigh the photograph on a gram balance. Then take a pair of scissors and carefully cut out of the photo all the images of the structure you want to quantify. Weigh these pieces en masse. The ratio of the weights will be directly proportional to the ratio of surface area occupied in the photo by the object of interest. If you do this for multiple fields, the pooled results will be representative of the volumetric relationship in the three dimensional tissue.

The general name for this type of anlysis, whether done manually or by computer, is stereometry.

Answer 2

I have never used an electron microscope before but if it works like a regular microscope then you could just count the number of each type of protein in a given area/volume.

Answer 3

i'm extraordinarily certained which you will not see an electron, besides the fact that if shall we maginfy to that is point. i think of it may well be like seeing the wind. We may well be waiting to make a solid of it utilizing a radiation that has effects on it. yet not with seen gentle.