Fig. 1: Experimental pipeline from sample preparation to imaging.

a Sample preparation. A mouse brain with the region of interest (ROI) indicated with green dots is sliced into thick brain sections (thickness ≥1 mm). The thick brain sections undergo histology with osmium protocol and become dark (the green square represents the ROI to be imaged with the electron microscope). After embedding, the block of tissue (1 mm scale bar) is trimmed in a hexagonal shape and prepared for ultrathin sectioning onto grids or GridTape. b Schematic cross-section of six distributed autoTEMs. c Photograph of an autoTEM system in the EM suite.