An easily made, inexpensive, cover slip carrier for critical point drying
✍ Scribed by Hollander, Brian A. ;Maugel, Timothy K. ;Bonar, Dale B.
- Publisher
- Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
- Year
- 1988
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 236 KB
- Volume
- 8
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0741-0581
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Students of development and morphology often have difficulty conceptualizing three-dimensionality from twodimensional images of structures and organisms. In this respect, the inherent depth of field of the scanning electron microscope (SEM) provides a powerful teaching tool, as well as a research instrument. While preparing SEM specimens as teaching aids for an introductory course in Genetics and Development we discovered a lack of inexpensive carriers for cover slips containing small specimens to be critical point dried. We report here a simple design for a carrier fashioned from readily available material.
Small specimens (e.g., sea urchin eggs, Dictvostelium amoebae, etc.) are fixed sequentially in 2% glutaraldehyde and 1% osmium, both followed by adequate buffer rinses. Specimens are then attached to 13 mm polylysine-coated cover slips according to the method of Weiss (1984). We use thirteen millimeter cover slips since they most closely match the diameter of our specimen stubs and therefore eliminate overhang. Other size cover slips can be substituted depending on the particular stub size in use. The cover slips are then transferred to carriers, which are constructed as follows.