Correlative light-electron microscopy
Correlative light-electron microscopy (CLEM) is a very special method that helps us to see the same structure we are looking at on two different microscopes at the same time. With CLEM, we use two different types of light, visible light and electron beams, to see an object in different ways.
Imagine you have a really tiny toy car that you want to examine closely. First, you might use a regular microscope with visible light to see the outside parts of the car, like the wheels or the color of the paint. But then you want to see more detailed parts inside the car that are too small to see with regular light.
So you then send the toy car to an electron microscope where it is magnified with faster electron particles since electrons have smaller wavelengths, allowing for a more detailed view. However, since you need to prepare the object for electron microscopy, the toy car will be placed inside a container that looks kind of like a little oven. This container is special, it only allows the electrons to pass through and not the visible light. So you can't see the outside parts of the toy car anymore, which is not very helpful.
And that's where CLEM comes in handy. Instead of just looking at the toy car through regular light or with electrons, you can do both! You can take a picture of the toy car with the regular microscope, then use a special marking material, that makes the toy car visible to both types of light. So when the toy car is then moved into the electron microscope to get a closer look at its detailed parts, the marking material guides the scientists to look at the same area that they saw with the visible light microscope.
Using CLEM, scientists can see how certain structures are distributed within a cell or a tissue, and analyze the function for these structures together with the structures present around it with greater accuracy. CLEM helps us to increase our knowledge of biological structures, and can be used to gain information that might otherwise remain unknown.
Imagine you have a really tiny toy car that you want to examine closely. First, you might use a regular microscope with visible light to see the outside parts of the car, like the wheels or the color of the paint. But then you want to see more detailed parts inside the car that are too small to see with regular light.
So you then send the toy car to an electron microscope where it is magnified with faster electron particles since electrons have smaller wavelengths, allowing for a more detailed view. However, since you need to prepare the object for electron microscopy, the toy car will be placed inside a container that looks kind of like a little oven. This container is special, it only allows the electrons to pass through and not the visible light. So you can't see the outside parts of the toy car anymore, which is not very helpful.
And that's where CLEM comes in handy. Instead of just looking at the toy car through regular light or with electrons, you can do both! You can take a picture of the toy car with the regular microscope, then use a special marking material, that makes the toy car visible to both types of light. So when the toy car is then moved into the electron microscope to get a closer look at its detailed parts, the marking material guides the scientists to look at the same area that they saw with the visible light microscope.
Using CLEM, scientists can see how certain structures are distributed within a cell or a tissue, and analyze the function for these structures together with the structures present around it with greater accuracy. CLEM helps us to increase our knowledge of biological structures, and can be used to gain information that might otherwise remain unknown.