Abstract
Three-dimensional (3-D) analysis of anatomical ultrastructures is important in biological research. However, 3-D image analysis on exact serial sets of ultra-thin sections from biological specimens is very difficult to achieve, and limited information can be obtained by 3-D reconstruction from these sections due to the small area that can be reconstructed. On the other hand, the high-penetration power of electrons by an ultra-high accelerating voltage enables thick sections of biological specimens to be examined. High-voltage electron microscopy (HVEM) is particularly useful for 3-D analysis of the central nervous system because considerably thick sections can be observed at the ultrastructure level. Here, we applied HVEM tomography assisted by light microscopy to a study of the 3-D chemical neuroanatomy of the rat lower spinal cord annotated by double-labeling immunohistochemistry. This powerful methodology is useful for studying molecular and/or chemical neuroanatomy at the 3-D ultrastructural level.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by KAKENHI from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, Culture and Technology (MEXT), Japan (to M.K. and H.S) and by research grants from the Takeda Science Foundation, Japan (to H.S.); from the Sumitomo Foundation, Japan (to H.S.); from the Daiichi-Sankyo Foundation of Life Science, Japan (to H.S.); from the Kanae Foundation for the Promotion of Medical Science, Japan (to H.S.); from the Nakajima Foundation, Japan (to H.S.); from the Brain Science Foundation, Japan (to H.S.); from the Senri Life Science Foundation, Japan (to H.S.); and by the Co-operative Study by High-voltage Electron Microscopy (H-1250M) of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Japan (to M.K. and H.S.).
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Oti, T., Satoh, K., Saito, K. et al. Three-dimensional evaluation of the spinal local neural network revealed by the high-voltage electron microscopy: a double immunohistochemical study. Histochem Cell Biol 138, 693–697 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00418-012-0976-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00418-012-0976-6