Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, USA.
Molecular Diabetology, University Hospital and Faculty of Medicine Carl Gustav Carus, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Nature. 2021 Nov;599(7883):147-151. doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03992-4. Epub 2021 Oct 6.
Understanding cellular architecture is essential for understanding biology. Electron microscopy (EM) uniquely visualizes cellular structures with nanometre resolution. However, traditional methods, such as thin-section EM or EM tomography, have limitations in that they visualize only a single slice or a relatively small volume of the cell, respectively. Focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) has demonstrated the ability to image small volumes of cellular samples with 4-nm isotropic voxels. Owing to advances in the precision and stability of FIB milling, together with enhanced signal detection and faster SEM scanning, we have increased the volume that can be imaged with 4-nm voxels by two orders of magnitude. Here we present a volume EM atlas at such resolution comprising ten three-dimensional datasets for whole cells and tissues, including cancer cells, immune cells, mouse pancreatic islets and Drosophila neural tissues. These open access data (via OpenOrganelle) represent the foundation of a field of high-resolution whole-cell volume EM and subsequent analyses, and we invite researchers to explore this atlas and pose questions.
理解细胞结构对于理解生物学至关重要。电子显微镜（EM）以纳米分辨率独特地可视化细胞结构。然而，传统方法，如薄切片 EM 或 EM 断层扫描，分别存在仅能可视化单个切片或细胞的相对较小体积的局限性。聚焦离子束扫描电子显微镜（FIB-SEM）已经证明了能够以 4nm 各向同性体素成像小体积细胞样本的能力。由于 FIB 铣削的精度和稳定性的提高，以及增强的信号检测和更快的 SEM 扫描，我们将能够以 4nm 体素成像的体积增加了两个数量级。在这里，我们呈现了这样一个分辨率的容积 EM 图谱，包含十个全细胞和组织的三维数据集，包括癌细胞、免疫细胞、小鼠胰岛和果蝇神经组织。这些开放获取的数据（通过 OpenOrganelle）代表了高分辨率全细胞容积 EM 及其后续分析领域的基础，我们邀请研究人员探索这个图谱并提出问题。
