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Muscle sample preparation for scanning electron microscopy
1CSIRO Division of Food Research, Meat Research Laboratory, PO Box 12, Cannon Hill, Queensland 4170, Australia.
Abstract:
Scanning electron microscopy has a number of features which make it more suited to studying the relationships between muscle structure and the rheological properties of meat than either light microscopy or transmission electron microscopy. One of these features is the ability to examine large samples at high magnifications without the need to section the material. A simple tissue preparation procedure is presented which allows this feature of SEM to be fully utilized and consistently produces high quality results.
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01:20Preparation of Samples for Electron Microscopy
01:03Fixation and Sectioning
The simplest type of preparation is the wet mount, in which the specimen is placed in a drop of liquid on the slide. A liquid specimen can be directly deposited on the slide using a dropper. Solid specimens, such as skin scraping, can be placed on the slide before adding a drop of liquid to prepare the wet mount. Sometimes the liquid is simply water, but stains are often added...