Freezing tissue theory

The ideal solution to microanalysis would be simply to freeze the plant material rapidly to the temperature of liquid nitrogen and then section it while it is still frozen on a cryotome. The frozen sections would then be transferred to a cold stage in a TEM and analyzed. In theory, no ion movement will take place and analysis at the high resolution of TEM should be possible. Indeed, this is a useful technique for liver, kidney, and soft animal tissues, but unfortunately it is almost impossible to cut tough plant material, and maintain the sections in a reasonable state for analysis (2). Even if this problem could be overcome unstained tissues will be difficult to visualize in TEM. 

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