A Review of the Potential and Versatility of Colloidal Gold Cytochemical Labeling for Molecular Morphology

Abstract

In the present article we review several postembedding cytochemical techniques using the colloidal gold marker. Owing to the high atomic number of gold, the colloidal gold particles are electron dense. They are spherical in shape and can be prepared in sizes from 1 to 25 nm, which renders this marker among the best for electron microscopy. In addition, because it can be bound to several molecules, this marker has the advantage of being extremely versatile. Combined to immunoglobulins or immunoglobulin-binding proteins (protein A), it has been applied successfully in immunocytochemistry. Colloidal gold particles 5–15 nm in size are excellent for postembedding cytochemistry. Particles of smaller size, such as 1 nm, must be silver enhanced to be visualized by transmission electron microscopy. We have elected to review the superiority of indirect immunocytochemical approaches using IgG-gold or protein A-gold (protein G-gold and protein AG-gold). Lectins or enzymes can be tagged with colloidal gold particles, and the corresponding lectin-gold and enzyme-gold techniques have specific advantages and great potential. Using an indirect digoxigenin-tagged nucleotide and an antidigoxigenin probe, colloidal gold technology can also be used for in situ hybridization at the electron microscope level. Affinity characteristics lie behind all cytochemical techniques and several molecules displaying high affinity properties can also be beneficial for colloidal gold electron microscopy cytochemistry. All of these techniques can be combined in various ways to produce multiple labelings of several binding sites on the same tissue section. Colloidal gold is particulate and can easily be counted; thus the cytochemical signal can be evaluated quantitatively, introducing further advantages to the use of the colloidal gold marker. Finally, several combinations and multiple step procedures have been designed to amplify the final signal which renders the techniques more sensitive. The approaches reviewed here have been applied successfully in different fields of cell and molecular biology, cell pathology, plant biology and pathology, microbiology and virology. The potential of the approaches is emphasized in addition to different ways to assess specificity, sensitivity and accuracy of results.