Issues

The image depicts an artistic representation of the lift-out and sectioning step with a focused ion beam (FIB), which is referred to as serial lift-out. A block of vitreously frozen biological material (in this case, a single C. elegans L1 larva) is attached (or "welded") to a micromanipulator needle. The underside of the block is then attached to a rectangular mesh copper EM grid, and a section of ~1 µm is cut away from it with the FIB. This procedure is repeated, yielding an array of sections that can be further thinned to ~200 nm for cryo-ET and further structural analysis. Image hand drawn (ink), digitised and coloured with Adobe Fresco (iPad). Read more in 'Cryo-electron tomography: en route to the molecular anatomy of organisms and tissues' by Plitzko and colleagues on pp 2415-2425 of this issue of Biochemical Society Transactions. Image courtesy of JM Plitzko