ARE ELECTRON AND NEAR-FIELD MICROSCOPIES COMPLEMENTARY

Near-field microscopies of biological macromolecules have shown an increasing growth of interest, but it should be kept in mind that such observations of biological material still pose a number of problems, at the levels of both sample preparation and image interpretation. An interdisciplinary approach is advised, for it could provide a combination of the traditional biophysical and biochemical methods, and that of electron microscopy, which are rather well established. Near-field microscopies, however, have unique possibilities to observe and analyse biological objects, which are not accessible to electron microscopy, and which offer through these new microscopies, a new dimension to biological imaging. Some examples illustrate the possibilities and limits of electron microscopy, in connection with which we propose some domains where a complementarity of these methods should be particularly opportune.