[3dem] "leopard skin" ice

[Lynne.Waddington at csiro.au]

________________________________


Hi All

This has been very interesting. In Australia it is definitely snake-skin, no shaving necessary...  I have interpreted it in the same way as Willem, and I do see it increasing over time, especially toward the end of the day after I’ve loaded a number of cryo grids. The cure has been to do a really good cryo cycle overnight and in the morning everything is fine again.

However, on Friday my first grid of the day was extremely snakey, but subsequent grids were fine, so something else must be going on.

I am following this post with great interest!

Lynne


Lynne Waddington
CryoTEM facility
CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering
343 Royal Parade
Parkville
Victoria 3052
AUSTRALIA
Phone: +61 3 9662 7205
Fax:      +61 3 9662 7101
e-mail: lynne.waddington at csiro.au<UrlBlockedError.aspx>


From: 3dem-bounces at ncmir.ucsd.edu [mailto:3dem-bounces at ncmir.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Willem Tichelaar
Sent: Friday, 22 November 2013 9:31 AM
To: 3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu
Subject: PS Re: [3dem] "leopard skin" ice

PS See also Dubochet et al. (1988) Quart. Rev. Biophys. 21, pp. 129-228, Fig. 32 c and d

Hi Frank,

I thought that the contamination with a leopard skin pattern arises in the microscope when the vacuum is not clean i.e. when the partial water pressure near the specimen is not low enough. Then, the contamination that you see should increase with time though.

Good luck,
Willem.
On 11/20/13 6:23 PM, frankpolzer at physik.hu-berlin.de<mailto:frankpolzer at physik.hu-berlin.de> wrote:

Hi again,



Please find attached an example image of the ice I observed.



Cheers,

Frank





Dear all,



During the last weeks, I frequently observe what I believe is so-called

leopard skin ice in my vitrified samples (plunge frozen in ethane using

Mark IV Vitrobot).



What again is the reason for this type of ice and how can this be avoided?



Thanks for your help in advance,



Frank





Dr. Frank Polzer



TEM Group

Insitute of Physics

Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

Newtonstraße 15

12489 - Berlin

Tel.: +49 30 2093-4995 (office)

Tel.: +49 30 2093-7829 (TEM)

Fax: +49 30 2093-7886





_______________________________________________

3dem mailing list

3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu<mailto:3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>

https://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/3dem






_______________________________________________

3dem mailing list

3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu<mailto:3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>

https://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/3dem



--

Dr. Willem Tichelaar

Richard-Drach-Str. 5

69123 Heidelberg, Deutschland



phone: +49 (0)6221 779409; fax: +49 (0)6221 779411

e-mail: w.tichelaar at online.de<mailto:w.tichelaar at online.de>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/mailman/private/3dem/attachments/20131124/5e47e7e9/attachment.html