Practical Course at UCEM - TEM sample preparation for life science, 8-12 December 2025

Course description

This is a practical course on biological sample preparation for TEM and includes:

• Ultra-microtome sectioning
• Chemical fixation
• Plastic embedding
• TEM imaging
• High-pressure freezing & freeze substitution
• Immunolabeling techniques (Immunogold, CLEM)
• Volume EM (FIB-SEM & Tomography)
• Segmentation and sampling - Online lecture by Ilya Belevich, University of Helsinki

Participants will practice TEM sample preparation and TEM imaging with a sample from their own project. Lab space limits the number of participants to 8, chosen by motivation and project aim. Write a short project description, motivation for participating and what sample you would like to bring for the course. It takes time to do fixation and plastic embedding. Therefore, one test-sample should be brought to be prepared before the course, and a new test-sample is brought for the first day.

In addition, a small presentation about an EM-project idea of your own should be prepared and presented on the last day.

Participants should attend all theoretical and practical parts of the course to receive a certificate of 1,5 hp.

Pre-requisite criterion: Basic EM course at UCEM or previous equal experiences with EM methods.

Teachers: Sara Henriksson, Agnieszka Ziolkowska, Behnam Lak and Linda Sandblad