Correlative light and electron microscopy – in its simplest terms – is where both light and electron microscopy are performed on the same sample. It is an exceptionally powerful approach that exploits the advantages of both techniques and provides more insight than each technique alone.

A CLEM approach is not a high throughput approach but can be used to address questions that sometimes aren’t possible with either technique alone. For example, CLEM is used for:

• Targeting and visualising the ultrastructure of a rare event
  • at the cellular level eg. low levels of transfection / knockdown / infection or specific time points of infection / intracellular trafficking / cell cycle
  • at the subcellular level eg. rare organelles or rare contacts between structures or events with short time span
• Identification of ultrastructural localisation of a specific protein(s)
  • At the cellular level eg. using protein expression to identify cell types within tissues or mixed cultures or model organisms
  • At the subcellular level eg. intracellular localisation of proteins to specific organelles or sub-populations of organelles.

We have been using CLEM approaches for more than 20 years and have collated our published work by either the light or electron microscopy technique, or the level of correlation (cellular or subcellular) used. If you are interested in CLEM approaches or would like to discuss a potential project, please contact Jemima Burden.