Journal of Microscopy, Vol. 198, Pt 3, June 2000, p. 161.

Introduction

This issue contains a selection of presentations from the 6th

International Botanical Meeting, organized by the Royal

Microscopical Society and held at the University of St

Andrews in March 1999. This series of meetings, spanning

the last 37 years, has witnessed the evolution of plant

microscopy from the predominant light microscopy era of

the early 1960s, through the `golden age' of EM in the

1970s and 1980s, and ending with the resurgence of

optical microscopy in the late 1980s through to the turn of

the century.

With the recent completion of the yeast genome

sequencing project and the near completion of the

arabidopsis and human genome sequencing projects, the

post-genomics/proteomics era has arrived. There will be a

need for information on the location and function of

numerous gene products and the microscopical character-

ization of the phenotypes of both mutant and transgenic

organisms. Thus, over the next few years we can predict an

increasing demand for high quality microscopy in the plant

sciences. Perhaps even the decline in the application of

electron microscopy will be reversed, and funding will be

made available to train a new generation of experts in the

techniques of plant ultrastructure; skills that are being lost

in the current enthusiasm for molecular technology.

As with the more recent Botanical Microscopy meetings,

the programme at St Andrews was a mix of techniques and

applications focusing on the use of microscopy in plant cell

biology. The papers published here reflect the ethos of these

meetings in bringing together a group of plant cell biologists

united by the use of the microscope to forward their

research programmes. Perhaps the dominant theme of the

meeting was the ever-increasing application of methodology

that permits the study of living cells, although it was clear

that techniques such as immunocytochemistry, for both LM

and EM, will continue to play a vital role in our

understanding of cell structure and function.

Therefore, in this issue you will find articles on a mix of

techniques applied to a wide variety of organisms; these

include microscopy on living cells to make direct measure-

ments with fluorescent probes and to study membrane

dynamics, laser micromanipulation techniques and EM

immunocytochemistry.

Plans for the next meeting in the series, to be held in

Portugal in 2003, are well underway. It would perhaps be

foolish to try to predict the trends in plant microscopy that

will be evidenced then. However, with a continuing

convergence of cellular, developmental and molecular

biology the microscope will continue to be at the heart of

plant sciences for a long time to come.

Chris Hawes

Oxford Brookes University

March 2000

q 2000 The Royal Microscopical Society 161