The Application of 3D Cryo-Volume Electron Microscopy to Visualize and Quantify the Photosynthetic Filamentous Cyanobacterium Anabaena

Cryogenic volume electron microscopy enabled interpretable whole-cell 3D ultrastructure of filamentous cyanobacteria, including quantification of carboxysomes and cyanophycin granules.

• Why it matters: Chemical fixation and metal staining can distort nanoscale architecture, limiting how reliably whole photosynthetic cells can be visualized in 3D.
• What they did: Anabaena cells were plunge-frozen on poly-L-lysine grids, then platinum-coated and xenon-trenched for alternating argon milling and through-lens detector imaging; 3D volumes were segmented with 2.5D U-Net and quantified in Dragonfly 3D World.
• The result: Block-face images resolved cell wall, thylakoids, phycobilisomes, carboxysomes, cyanophycin, and polyphosphate granules, and whole-cell 3D rendering quantified carboxysomes and cyanophycin granules and measured thylakoid thickness and spacing in Anabaena inaequalis and Anabaena sp. UTEX 2576.

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