Cryo-electron microscopy in the context of Transmission electron microscopy

Cytochemistry is the branch of cell biology dealing with the detection of cell constituents by means of biochemical analysis and visualization techniques. This is the study of the localization of cellular components through the use of staining methods. The term is also used to describe a process of identification of the biochemical content of cells. Cytochemistry is a science of localizing chemical components of cells and cell organelles on thin histological sections by using several techniques like enzyme localization, micro-incineration, micro-spectrophotometry, radioautography, cryo-electron microscopy, X-ray microanalysis by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, immunohistochemistry and cytochemistry, etc.

Bacterial microcompartments (BMCs) are organelle-like structures found in bacteria. They consist of a protein shell that encloses enzymes and other proteins. BMCs are typically about 40–200 nanometers in diameter and are made entirely of proteins. The shell functions like a membrane, as it is selectively permeable. Other protein-based compartments found in bacteria and archaea include encapsulin nanocompartments and big gas vesicles.

Jacques Dubochet (born 8 June 1942) is a retired Swiss biophysicist. He is a former researcher at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, and an honorary professor of biophysics at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

In 2017, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution". He received the Royal Photographic Society Progress Medal, alongside his colleagues Professor Joachim Frank and Dr Richard Henderson, in 2018 for 'an important advance in the scientific or technological development of photography or imaging in the widest sense'.

Joachim Frank (German pronunciation: [ˈjoːaxɪm ˈfʁaŋk] ) HonFRMS; born September 12, 1940) is a German-American biophysicist at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate. He is regarded as the founder of single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017 with Jacques Dubochet and Richard Henderson. He also made significant contributions to structure and function of the ribosome from bacteria and eukaryotes.

The periplasm is a concentrated gel-like matrix in the space between the inner cytoplasmic membrane and the bacterial outer membrane called the periplasmic space in Gram-negative (more accurately "diderm") bacteria. Using cryo-electron microscopy it has been found that a much smaller periplasmic space is also present in Gram-positive bacteria (more accurately "monoderm"), between cell wall and the plasma membrane. The periplasm may constitute up to 40% of the total cell volume of gram-negative bacteria, but is a much smaller percentage in gram-positive bacteria.

Biological data visualization is a branch of bioinformatics concerned with the application of computer graphics, scientific visualization, and information visualization to different areas of the life sciences. This includes visualization of sequences, genomes, alignments, phylogenies, macromolecular structures, systems biology, microscopy, and magnetic resonance imaging data. Software tools used for visualizing biological data range from simple, standalone programs to complex, integrated systems.

An emerging trend is the blurring of boundaries between the visualization of 3D structures at atomic resolution, the visualization of larger complexes by cryo-electron microscopy, and the visualization of the location of proteins and complexes within whole cells and tissues. There has also been an increase in the availability and importance of time-resolved data from systems biology, electron microscopy, and cell and tissue imaging.