The 11th quadrennial International Botanical Microscopy meeting took place in the new conference facility at Oxford Brookes University in April 2019, 24 years after Oxford Brookes last hosted the event. This was the latest in a long sequence of these specialist meetings that bring together some of the best plant microscopists from around the world to share cutting-edge developments in techniques, and their application to plant and fungal specimens. One of the great joys of the Botanical Microscopy meetings is that the topics covered are so diverse, both in terms of the biology and also the technology. In the space of four days talks ranged over the cytoskeleton and motors, the endomembrane system, mitochondria, autophagy, programmed cell death, chromatin organisation, plasmodesmata, lipid signalling, reactive oxygen species (ROS), reactive nitrogen species (RNS), calcium signalling, cell shape, biomechanics, plant–pathogen interactions and even vegetable vectors for human pathogens. The techniques ranged from confocal super-resolution, stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET), total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRF), Brillouin, correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM), focussed ion-beam (FIB) SEM, serial-block face (SBF) SEM, second-harmonic imaging to whole-root imaging in transparent soil. Given this plethora of new approaches and biological systems, it is interesting to reflect on how much has changed between the two meetings held at Oxford Brookes nearly a quarter of a century apart. The origin of the International Botanical Microscopy meetings is inextricably linked to developments in electron microscopy in the 1960–1970s (Gunning, 1996), and EM techniques dominated the early meetings. Ultra-rapid freezing techniques were introduced in the 1980s (Gilkey & Staehelin, 1986), but it was not until the development of high-pressure freezing (HPF) that major breakthroughs were achieved for thick plant specimens (Dahl & Staehelin, 1989; Kaeser et al., 1989). By the fifth meeting in 1995 at Oxford Brookes, HPF was set to become the gold standard in sub-cellular preservation. However, very few HPF systems were available for plant scientists then (and now), which means the overall impact has been much more restricted than the technique deserves. For those groups with access, HPF and tomography has yielded beautiful and quantitative insights into plant cell structure (Seguı́-Simarro et al., 2004; Donohoe et al., 2007;

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简介：第11届国际植物显微镜会议

第 11 届四年一度的国际植物显微镜学会议于 2019 年 4 月在牛津布鲁克斯大学的新会议设施举行，距牛津布鲁克斯上次举办该活动已经过去了 24 年。这是这些专家会议的一系列会议中的最新一次，这些会议汇集了来自世界各地的一些最优秀的植物显微镜学家，分享技术的前沿发展及其在植物和真菌标本中的应用。植物显微镜学会议的一大乐趣在于所涵盖的主题非常多样化，无论是在生物学还是技术方面。在为期四天的演讲中，涉及细胞骨架和运动、内膜系统、线粒体、自噬、程序性细胞死亡、染色质组织、胞间连丝、脂质信号、活性氧 (ROS)、活性氮 (RNS)、钙信号、细胞形状、生物力学、植物-病原体相互作用，甚至人类病原体的植物载体。这些技术包括共聚焦超分辨率、随机光学重建显微镜 (STORM)、Förster 共振能量转移 (FRET)、全内反射荧光显微镜 (TIRF)、布里渊、相关光电子显微镜 (CLEM)、聚焦离子束 ( FIB) SEM、连续块面 (SBF) SEM、二次谐波成像到透明土壤中的全根成像。考虑到大量的新方法和生物系统，反思在牛津布鲁克斯举行的两次会议之间发生了多少变化是很有趣的，这两次会议相隔近四分之一个世纪。国际植物显微镜会议的起源与 1960-1970 年代电子显微镜的发展密不可分（Gunning，1996），并且 EM 技术在早期会议中占主导地位。1980 年代引入了超快速冷冻技术 (Gilkey & Staehelin, 1986)，但直到高压冷冻 (HPF) 的发展才在厚植物标本上取得重大突破 (Dahl & Staehelin, 1989; Kaeser等人，1989 年）。到 1995 年在牛津布鲁克斯举行的第五次会议时，HPF 已成为亚细胞保存的金标准。然而，当时（和现在）植物科学家很少使用 HPF 系统，这意味着整体影响受到的限制比该技术应得的要多得多。对于具有访问权限的组，