Nano S equipped with a laser operating at 633 nm. The sample grids
used for electron microscopy were purchased from Electron Microscopy
Sciences (EMS, Hatfield, PA, USA). The grids were treated with a plasma
cleaner setup (20 s at 10–1 Torr) to make them hydrophilic.
For TEM measurements, samples were prepared on hydrophilic 400 mesh
carbon-coated copper grids, while 200 mesh carbon-coated copper grids
were used for the TEM tilt series. The TEM tilt series were acquired
with SerialEM, and IMOD was used for 3D reconstruction of the dendroids
from the tilt series. For cryo-TEM measurements, 400 mesh holey carbon
grids were used. For cryo-TEM, after blotting, the samples were plunged
into liquid ethane at about liquid nitrogen temperature by using a
Vitrobot system (FEI Company). Samples for (cryo-)TEM were imaged
with a 1400Plus JEOL TEM operating at 120 kV. The contrast of (cryo-)TEM
pictures was adjusted by using ImageJ-win64. Atomic force microscopy
images were recorded on a Bruker Multimode 5 using contact mode. NMR
spectra in D2O were obtained on a Bruker Avance III spectrometer
operating at 500 MHz for 1H, equipped with a 5 mm TXI probe.
Fluorescence emission spectra were acquired on a Cary Eclipse spectrophotometer.