This is a photo gallery of some recent biological x-ray microscopy projects. Click on the topic below to jump to it, or scroll through the whole document.
P.S.: We are in the process of commissioning a version of our microscope to work with frozen hydrated specimens; it will include more spectroscopic capabilities, and tilt capabilities for nanotomography.
P.P.S.: For a recent review article which presents results from a large number of x-ray microscopy groups, see Kirz et al., Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics 28:1, 33-130 (1995).
What's the microscope's resolution?
Microfabricated test pattern imaged in reflection mode in a BioRad confocal microscope with a Zeiss 1.2 N.A. water immersion objective (left; features visible to about 150 nm), and in our x-ray microscope with a 45 nm outer zone width zone plate (center and right; features visible to about 35 nm).
Pretty pictures of whole,
wet cultured fibroblasts
Soft x-ray micrographs of wet, glutaraldehyde-fixed chick embryo skin tissue fibroblasts (courtesy J. Gilbert and J. Pine, Caltech; and C. Buckley, King's College, London). The bottom pictures show how the choice of x-ray wavelength can affect contrast in images of organelles.
X-ray microscope image, and protein and DNA map, of air-dried bull sperm (prepared by R. Balhorn, LLNL). Images were taken by X. Zhang (Stony Brook) at six x-ray absorption resonance wavelengths, and were used to derive the quantitative maps.
Soft x-ray micrograph of an air-dried fibroblast (prepared by K. Hedberg, U. Oregon). The grey scale image was acquired in bright field mode, and shows carbon mass. The red image was acquired by Henry Chapman in dark field mode, and shows 10 nm gold (silver enhanced to 25 nm) used to label tubulin (note fibers crossing above and below the nucleus). This capability is being developed for imaging of gold labels within unsectioned cells. Scale bar: 7 micrometers.
Click here to go to the Stony Brook x-ray microscopy home page.
This page updated Jan. 3, 1996 by Chris Jacobsen.