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Embedding Media — Old and New

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Book cover Advanced Techniques in Biological Electron Microscopy

Abstract

Embedding media for microscopy have no other value than that of a convenient means to achieve a particular end, namely, to enable the object of interest to be cut sufficiently thin for the microscope to develop its full resolution. The embedding does not contribute to the staining of the object nor to the resolving power of the microscope. The best embedding medium permits thin sectioning with the least damage during specimen preparation and gives the least interference during microscopy. This is not to say that embedding is a trivial part of specimen preparation; the cutting of the tissue in the embedding matrix is a mechanochemical event which can be interpreted only in terms of sophisticated concepts of the properties of materials. The most fundamental approach to the problem in the biological literature is that of Wachtel, Gettner and Ornstein (1966). Useful mechanical concepts are developed in various texts, such as Nielsen (1962) or McClintock and Argon (1966) and mechanochemical concepts in the paper by Watson (1961). Despite the advanced state of materials science, it has had little impact in improving our understanding of the mechanism of the cutting of embedded tissue, beyond what is intuitively obvious to biologists. It is clear that the embedding medium “supports and holds together” the tissue, but this phenomenon seldom is encountered in industrial processes where a detailed analysis is sufficiently important to engender research. It is possible that embedding material can be compared usefully to the matrix in composite materials, but that it functions in embedded tissue to produce an effect opposite to that intended for industrial laminates and composites.

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  1. John H. Luft
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Structures School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    James K. Koehler Ph. D.

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© 1973 Springer-Verlag Berlin · Heidelberg

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Luft, J.H. (1973). Embedding Media — Old and New. In: Koehler, J.K. (eds) Advanced Techniques in Biological Electron Microscopy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-65492-3_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-65492-3_1

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