Correlative microscopy: bridging the gap between fluorescence light microscopy and cryo-electron tomography.

Cryo-electron tomography of frozen-hydrated biological samples offers a means of studying large and complex cellular structures in three-dimensions and with nanometer-scale resolution. The low contrast of unstained biological material embedded in amorphous ice and the need to minimise the exposure of these radiation-sensitive samples to the electron beam result in a poor signal-to-noise ratio. This poses problems not only in the visualisation and interpretation of such tomograms, it is also a problem in surveying the sample and in finding regions which contain the features of interest and which are suitable for recording tomograms.