Abstract

Microfluidic Devices for Cryomicroscopy of Cells and Soft Materials

Thomas Burg, Group Leader, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry

In this talk, I will present a new microsystems-based approach towards attaining millisecond-scale time resolution in correlative live-cell imaging and electron microscopy (EM). Before entering the high vacuum of an electron microscope, biological samples must be fixed chemically or frozen. Due to the time required for this preparation, it is currently not possible to precisely correlate high-resolution EM images of cell structure with dynamics previously observed in the light microscope. Here I present a technique that overcomes this challenge by cryo-immobilizing the object to below 140 °C directly in the light microscope by ultra-rapid cooling. Key to this is a liquid nitrogen cooled microsystem which suppresses ice crystallization through freezing at more than ~104 °C/s. This new instrument can be integrated with conventional correlative light and electron microscopy workflows to open the path for understanding temporal relationships between cell activation and response in fields from neuroscience and immunology to pharmaceutical sciences.