Correlated Microscopy: From Dynamics to Structure

It has always been the aim of functional studies in biology to establish structurefunction relationships of the molecular machineries involved in the process of interest. A powerful tool within this field has always been electron microscopy continuously adapting to answer latest questions [1, 2] and therefore, principally shaping our view on cell architecture. Correlative approaches now allow to bridge the gap of information by combining dynamic data obtained by fluorescent light microscopy (LM) with the structural information of cryo-electron microscopy (CEM) or cryo-electron tomography (CET) and vice versa. Plasmodium berghei sporozoites are an ideal system for such studies. They are the reactive agents transmitting malaria from mosquitoes to rodents, and due to their close relation to the human pathogen Plasmodium falciparum they are widely used as a model organism. Since they are only 1 ?m thick they can be viewed in toto with ET. The sporozoites represent both, a motile, highly polarized eukaryotic cell and a devastating pathogen.