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. 2014 Sep 8;9(9):e106895. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0106895

Figure 1. Integrated scanning electron microscopy (SEM), immunofluorescence (IF) and AFM imaging of intercellular adhesion structures.

Figure 1

A: Correlation of SEM imaging with AFM imaging. Identically cultured plates of confluent HaCaT cells were fixed and imaged by SEM and Multimode AFM in increasing magnifications. The lower magnification images (SEM: A1, A2; AFM: A5, A6) show the cells with clear boundaries between neighboring cells where cell-cell adhesion occurs. The higher magnification images (SEM: A3, A4; AFM: A7, A8) show details of the adhesion junction with strand-shaped structures in parallel distribution between two cells. B: Correlation of IF imaging with AFM imaging. The same area on a confluent slide of HaCaT cells was captured simultaneously by IF and AFM after fixation of the cells. For IF imaging, HaCaT cells were labeled with anti-cytokeratin antibodies (red) and anti-desmoplakin antibodies (green). AFM images were captured by Bioscope AFM at increasing resolution with scan sizes of 100 µm (B2), 50 µm (B3) and 20 µm (B4). C: Correlation of IF imaging (C1) with AFM imaging [scan sizes of 100 µm (C2), 50 µm (C3) and 20 µm (C4)] after treatment with 10 µg/ml of the pathogenic anti-Dsg3 antibody Px4-3 for 24 h.