An object's depth can be roughly measured by focusing through the object. In this way, measurements of the step size in a stack of plates give a value of roughly 3 microns. In a sample exhibiting such stacks of plates in the vicinity of a few macroscopic rods stacked together, the individual rods in a stack appear to have a thickness less than this, approximately a micron. It is clear that the relationship between these objects needs further study. Thus a periodicity of m, which is desirable in the image plane, may not be resolved if oriented perpendicular to the image plane.
Some samples exhibit individual rods stacking to form a filament-like structure.
There are new structures that form in this region of phase space which exhibit a layered form not constructed of discrete macroscopic components. The periodicity of the lamellar phase is approximately m. These droplets are dynamic, and the layers undulate and are not well defined. We never observed a lamellar structure with a periodicity of the monomer length of 300 nm. This seems strange, given that most of the TMV, in the absence of added depletant, is in the monomeric form.