Atomic force microscope observation on ultrastructures in plant cells

AFM is being applied in increasingly wide research fields and extracting more biochemical/biophysical information that is beyond the capability of traditional SEM and TEM. Due to its inherent features, AFM is rarely used to observe the subcellular details within cells. Although subcellular features were recently observed on thin sections of plant tissues using AFM, this method might introduce unexpected artifacts during sample processing. Here we try to observe plant cells still embedded in resin block. This modified method minimizes the possibility of artifacts. The comparison among outcomes of AFM, SEM, TEM and LM on the same single cell suggest that this modified method is a good, applicable, efficient and faithful way applying AFM on biological materials.