Abstract
THE introduction of n-butyl and methyl meth-acrylates as embedding media1 constituted an important development in the preparation of ultra-thin sections of biological material; but their use is attended by various major difficulties. Shrinkage occurs on polymerization, hard objects are not penetrated by the monomer so that the plastic shrinks away and does not provide sufficient support, and sometimes there is an unaccountable appearance of bubbles around the specimen. Moreover, the polymerization process is not uniform and sometimes causes severe damage. This is perhaps most strikingly seen in bacteria where often only empty remnants of cell walls remain.
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References
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Maaløe, O., and Birch-Andersen, A., Sixth Symp. Soc. Gen. Microbiol. “Bacterial Anatomy”, 261 (1956).
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GLAUERT, A., ROGERS, G. & GLAUERT, R. A New Embedding Medium for Electron Microscopy. Nature 178, 803 (1956). https://doi.org/10.1038/178803a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/178803a0
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