Investigations of uptake of different chemical compounds by single cells ha
ve become a very popular topic and have been performed with different micro
analytical techniques using electron, laser, ion and X-ray beams. With the
advent of nuclear microprobes with submicron resolution it has been possibl
e to investigate distribution of different elements inside individual cell
with sensitivity of parts-per-million (ppm). Recently, with X-ray beams foc
used to 150 nm and high intensity obtained from third generation synchrotro
n facilities it became possible to perform analysis on a single cell with s
ensitivity of parts-per-billion (ppb). Synchrotron radiation offers also a
unique possibility to investigate an oxidation state for different elements
. In this paper, authors will present and discuss data from experiments on
single cells performed with high resolution nuclear and X-ray microprobes.
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