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life sciences

Focused ion beam sample preparation for cryo-electron tomography

Cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) is an extremely powerful technique that allows studies of the cellular landscape at high resolution in a near-native state. Biological samples thicker than 600 nm are not electron transparent and thus require thinning to be useful for cryo-ET. To thin down the sample the use of a scanning electron microscope fitted with a focused ion beam and a cryo stage (cryo-FIB/SEM) has become the gold standard.