Plunge freezing methods for vitrifying and creating a vitreous thin film (VTF) sample for cryogenic electron microscopy have been widely adopted.
Cryo-immobilisation vitrifies the sample in milliseconds, locking all the macromolecular components, elements and structures as they were in the living state for very high resolution analysis.
The ultimate goal is to derive the structures of molecular machineries of living systems within their natural, functional contexts and their interactions with other observed components.
VTF advantages:
- fast immobilisation with no loss of time resolution
- preservation of structure
- rapid simple technique for small particles
- no loss of ions/molecules or lipids
- no depolymerization of proteins
- no denaturation of enzymes
- no osmotic effects