Liquid Phase Electron Microscopy for Cellular Ultrastructure, Biochemistry and Dynamics

Fundamentally, biology is driven by transient, dynamic assemblies of biomolecules in solution. Therefore, imaging these assemblies live, either as isolates or in situ, is crucial for understanding essential dynamic processes such as chemotaxis, organellar morphology and cell division. Traditionally, these studies of cellular dynamics have remained the purview of super-resolution light microscopies and other related techniques, far from the frozen samples necessary to survive the vacuum of an electron microscope. Our work focuses on sample preparation, encapsulation and imaging techniques to enable the capture of subcellular components, live, in their native aqueous environments at nanometre resolutions across tenths of second timescales.