Expansion microscopy imaging of various neuronal structures

Abstract

Visualization of the spatial distribution of biomolecules with nanoscale precision is essential to understanding the molecular mechanisms of biological phenomena and diseases. Among several state-of-the-art visualization techniques, expansion microscopy (ExM) is an attractive tool, as it can achieve sub-20-nm resolution imaging of biological specimens, even with conventional diffraction-limited microscopy. This chapter first introduces the concept of ExM and its variants and then provides practical guidelines for implementing expansion microscopy and related techniques.

Keywords: DNA-antibody conjugation; Expansion microscopy (ExM); Iterative expansion microscopy (iExM); Re-embedding; Super-resolution microscopy.