New aspects of bacterial ultrastructure as revealed by modern acrylics for electron microscopy

Modern acrylics can be used over a wide temperature range (+60 degrees C to -80 degrees C) for infiltration, embedding, and polymerization. They can be used in procedures involving chemical fixation or rapid freezing. This flexibility allows for studies to be carried out upon the effects that different parameters involved in preparing biological tissue for microscopy have upon structure and retention of immunoreactivity. With most preparative methods contributions have been made to our knowledge on bacterial structure in gram-negative and gram-positive cells. The future should lie in integrating the advantages of the various methods for the purpose of advancing our understanding of bacterial structure/function.