Ultrastructural Study of Gastric Mucosa by Using High-pressure Freezing Technique

Abstract

The goal of specimen preparation for morphological investigation is to preserve the tissue or cell in the native state with which we can correlate structure and function. Cryofixation is generally accepted as the best initial fixation step to preserve not only the fine structure but also the antigenicity in biological samples. At the ultrastructural level, high-pressure freezing technique is currently the most reliable method to obtain a deep vitreous freezing that enable us to study complex biological samples with improved ultrastructural preservation. Here we introduce the application of high-pressure freezing/freeze substitution onto ultrastructural study of gastric mucosa which provides excellent ultrastructures and antigenicities of not only the epithelial cells of rat gastric glands but also the intraluminal exocytosed contents.