The New Gold Standard:
Leica’s EM IGL system makes fast work of immunogold labeling

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Immunogold labeling is the method of choice for staining cell and tissue sections for electron microscopy, but the manual procedure involves a series of short wash-and-wait steps that can add up to an entire day of tedious bench work. Leica’s new EM IGL automated immunogold labeling system, designed to improve the accuracy and reproducibility of biomedical experiments, solves this problem by automating most of the process.

The Leica EM IGL, which lists for $ 16,000 (US), reduces the amount of labor needed and the time it takes for staining by 70–80%, giving technicians the opportunity to pursue more interesting tasks in the lab. “When you do [immunogold staining] by hand, basically you can’t do anything else … But with the machine, you load it and walk away for a few hours at a time,” says Hong Yi, supervisor, Emory University School of Medicine Microscopy Core Facility. Yi’s laboratory tested the system for on-grid labeling of pancreatic tissue samples using Aurion Ultrasmall colloidal gold conjugates followed by silver enhancement with Aurion R-gent SE-EM, and Yi says that it has provided good results. “I wish I had thought of the idea myself,” she adds.