Fluorescence Microscopy Methods for Yeast

This chapter reviews and provides detailed protocols for the application of immunofluorescence and other fluorescence-microscopic procedures to yeast. These procedures play a role that is separate from but equal to the role of electron microscopy. Although in some situations the greater resolving power of the electron microscope is clearly essential to obtain the needed structural information, in other situations the necessary information can be obtained more easily, more reliably, or both, by light (including fluorescence) microscopy. The potential advantages of light-microscopic approaches derive from the facts (1) that they can be applied to lightly processed or living cells, (2) that much larger numbers of cells can be examined than by electron microscopy (note especially the great labor involved in visualizing the structure of whole cells by serial-section methods), and (3) that some structures have simply been easier to see by light microscopy than by electron microscopy. The methods are also effective with other yeasts such as Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Candida albicans.