Melamine resins and their application in electron microscopy

Melamine resins are derived from the heterocyclic compound triaminotriazine, C₃H₆N₆. Similar to proteins in structure and reactivity, water-soluble melamine resins can be used as water-embedding media for electron microscopy (Bachhuber and Frösch, 1983). The idea behind this approach was to study some of the artefacts of traditional embedding techniques and to work out conditions to eliminate as far as possible denaturing of proteins and extraction of lipids. Sectioned cells and tissues processed in the melamine resin Nanoplast show remarkable preservation of ultrastructure. Because they can be sectioned extremely thinly, melamine resins are particularly suitable for dark-field and electron spectroscopic imaging of unstained molecular suspensions providing in this way an unusually clear reproduction of ultrastructural detail such as the helical structure of isolated unstained double-strand DNA molecules (Frösch et al., 1987b).

In 1988, the melamine resin Nanostrat was introduced as an EM-compatible prolific substrate foil for cell culture (Westphal et al., 1988). Cells or bacteria cultivated on this material can be processed for various kinds of follow-up techniques like TEM, SEM, vertical sectioning and immunocytochemistry.