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Updated: Aug 12, 2026

Fundamental Technical Elements of Freeze-fracture/Freeze-etch in Biological Electron Microscopy
Published on: September 11, 2014
Ultrastructural imaging of freeze-fractured plant cells in the scanning electron microscope
1Natural History Museum, London, England.
Abstract:
The application of the freeze-fracture and cytoplasmic maceration technique in ultrastructural studies of plant cells is described. A major advantage of the technique is, that by extracting mobile cytoplasmic components from the freeze-fractured cells, surface relief is introduced and three-dimensional information is obtainable. The details of specimen preparation are described and the results obtained are reviewed. The use of chitosan embedding for very small or fragile specimens is described.
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