Scanning luminescence x-ray microscopy: Progress toward selective staining using microspheres

In scanning luminescence x-ray microscopy (SLXM), a high resolution x-ray probe is used to excite visible light emission (see Figs. 1 and 2). The technique has been developed with a goal of localizing dye-tagged biochemically active sites and structures at 50 nm resolution in thick, hydrated biological specimens. Following our initial efforts, Moronne et al. have begun to develop probes based on biotinylated terbium; we report here our progress towards using microspheres for tagging.Our initial experiments with microspheres were based on commercially-available carboxyl latex spheres which emitted ~ 5 visible light photons per x-ray absorbed, and which showed good resistance to bleaching under x-ray irradiation. Other work (such as that by Guo et al.) has shown that such spheres can be used for a variety of specific labelling applications. Our first efforts have been aimed at labelling ƒ actin in Chinese hamster ovarian (CHO) cells. By using a detergent/fixative protocol to load spheres into cells with permeabilized membranes and preserved morphology, we have succeeded in using commercial dye-loaded, spreptavidin-coated 0.03μm polystyrene spheres linked to biotin phalloidon to label f actin (see Fig. 3).