Immunofluorescence methods for yeast

This chapter provides protocols for the application of immunofluorescence procedures to yeast. It should perhaps be stressed that immunofluorescence and other light microscopic techniques 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 microscopy. The potential advantages of light microscopic approaches derive from various facts: (1) they can be applied to lightly processed or (in some cases) living cells, (2) 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) Some structures (for example, the cytoplasmic microtubules) have simply been easier to see by light microscopy than by electron microscopy.