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The platinum‐carbon replication of a homogenous population of gold particles makes log‐normal distributions of shadow widths and lengths
Author(s) -
Péranzi Gabriel,
Bayle Denis,
Telford John N.,
ThomasSoumarmon Annick
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
biology of the cell
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.543
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1768-322X
pISSN - 0248-4900
DOI - 10.1016/0248-4900(94)90016-7
Subject(s) - shadow (psychology) , population , normal distribution , platinum , distribution (mathematics) , particle (ecology) , membrane , materials science , optics , molecular physics , physics , biology , statistics , mathematics , mathematical analysis , psychology , ecology , biochemistry , genetics , demography , sociology , psychotherapist , catalysis
Gold particles were prepared, dried on grids and shadowed at 45° with a 1.2 nm platinum‐carbon (Pt‐C) film using the shadowing conditions previously described for the freeze‐fracture of gastric parietal cell membranes. The particle diameters and the particle shadow widths and lengths were measured using an image analysis system. Statistical analysis of 2000 diameters, shadow widths and shadow lengths indicated that a homogenous population of particles had a normal frequency distribution of diameters (mean diameter 14.5 ± 1.5 nm) and that the Pt‐C shadowing transformed that normal curve into a log‐normal frequency distribution of shadow widths. The frequency distribution of shadow lengths was log‐normal too. We conclude that a statistical partition of experimental frequency distributions of particle shadow widths and lengths of natural membranes to determine the number and parameters of individual components should involve log‐normal subdistributions rather than normal ones.
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