Subcellular Microanatomy by 3D Deconvolution Brightfield Microscopy: Method and Analysis Using Human Chromatin in the Interphase Nucleus

Figure 3

The freedom to view cells in 3D, as provided by the reconstruction methods in this paper, gives us greater morphological discriminatory abilities such that we can detect when cells that look different in 2D projections or slices (such as in cytology and histology preparations) are actually more similar than they first appear. This figure shows just one single plasma cell nucleus from different 3D angles. The angles are shown by the orientation of the boxes. In the top row, we see the box viewed from the different angles. In the bottom row we see the nucleus viewed from those same angles and in the middle row the two are superimposed. While the box viewed from different angles shows many different shapes we intuitively recognise this as being the same (or a very similar) object viewed from different angles. Because we have no such intuitive experience of complex nuclear chromatin, we cannot readily appreciate that the nuclei at the bottom are also identical and so they appear to us as different nuclei.