Murphy's law-if anything can go wrong, it will: Problems in phage electron microscopy

Abstract

The quality of bacteriophage electron microscopy appears to be on a downward course since the 1980s. This coincides with the introduction of digital electron microscopes and a general lowering of standards, possibly due to the disappearance of several world-class electron microscopists The most important problem seems to be poor contrast. Positive staining is frequently not recognized as an undesirable artifact. Phage parts, bacterial debris, and aberrant or damaged phage particles may be misdiagnosed as bacterial viruses. Digital electron microscopes often seem to be operated without magnification control because this is difficult and inconvenient. In summary, most phage electron microscopy problems may be attributed to human failure. Journals are a last-ditch defense and have a heavy responsibility in selecting competent reviewers and rejecting, or not, unsatisfactory articles.

Figure 1.Vibrio parahemolyticus phage KFP40. The phage is very similar to coliphage T4, but has a longer head and a larger genome. Negative staining with uranyl acetate. Tail fibers are folded along the tail.

Figure 2.

Vibrio parahemolyticus phage KFP40. The phage is very similar to coliphage T4, but has a longer head and a larger genome. Negative staining with phosphotungstate. Tail fibers are unfolded.

Figure 3. Assessment and correction of astigmatism by use of the FFT (Fast fournier transform) algorithm. (Top) Uncorrected. (Bottom) Corrected.