Department of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
Koret School of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel.
Nat Rev Endocrinol. 2021 May;17(5):307-316. doi: 10.1038/s41574-021-00479-0. Epub 2021 Mar 23.
A thorough knowledge of the structures of healthy mineralized tissues, such as bone or cartilage, is key to understanding the pathological changes occurring during disease. Such knowledge enables the underlying mechanisms that are responsible for pathology to be pinpointed. One high-resolution 3D method in particular - focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) - has fundamentally changed our understanding of healthy vertebrate mineralized tissues. FIB-SEM can be used to study demineralized matrix, the hydrated components of tissue (including cells) using cryo-fixation and even untreated mineralized tissue. The latter requires minimal sample preparation, making it possible to study enough samples to carry out studies capable of detecting statistically significant differences - a pre-requisite for the study of pathological tissues. Here, we present an imaging and characterization strategy for tissue structures at different length scales, describe new insights obtained on healthy mineralized tissues using FIB-SEM, and suggest future research directions for both healthy and diseased mineralized tissues.
深入了解健康矿化组织（如骨骼或软骨）的结构是理解疾病过程中发生的病理变化的关键。这种知识使我们能够确定导致病理学的潜在机制。一种特别的高分辨率 3D 方法 - 聚焦离子束扫描电子显微镜（FIB-SEM） - 从根本上改变了我们对健康脊椎动物矿化组织的理解。FIB-SEM 可用于研究脱矿基质、组织的水合成分（包括细胞），使用冷冻固定甚至未处理的矿化组织。后者需要最小的样品制备，从而可以研究足够的样本，以进行能够检测到具有统计学意义差异的研究 - 这是研究病理性组织的前提。在这里，我们提出了一种针对不同长度尺度的组织结构的成像和特征化策略，描述了使用 FIB-SEM 在健康矿化组织中获得的新见解，并为健康和患病矿化组织的未来研究方向提出了建议。
