IMPROVED IMMUNE DOUBLE-LABELING FOR CELL AND STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY

Colloidal gold is the most widely used electron dense marker in biolog ical electron microscopy. The development of procedures for making gol d particles of very defined sizes has made double or even multiple lab elling possible using gold of two or more different sizes. Lately a ne w type of electron dense marker has been developed consisting of ligan d-stabilized metal atom clusters rather than colloidal particles. The differences between these two types of markers are highlighted and the advantages of using metal atom clusters for immune labelling of certa in biological specimens are discussed. Possible methods of distinguish ing two such cluster labels in double labelling experiments are review ed. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.