Am. J. Bot. Join the BSA
HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
 QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


     


Cover Figure



Cover Illustration: The deep shade spike moss Selaginella erythropus (Mart.) Spring, a native of tropical South America, has enlarged microphyll epidermal cells, which are thought to increase light use efficiency. The epidermal cells have become major photosynthetic cells, with a giant cup-shaped chloroplast located in the lower part of each funnel-shaped cell. This unique chloroplast, called a bizonoplast, is dimorphic in ultrastructure. This deconvoluted image in pseudocolor was reconstructed from 3D images of the large cup-shaped bizonoplasts in epidermal cells and chloroplasts in mesophyll cells. This unstained, transverse section of a ventral microphyll of S. erythropus was viewed with a Leica TSC-SP5 confocal microscope. Deconvolution is a computational method used to reduce out-of-focus fluorescence in 3D microscope images and thus improve the resolution and contrast. Different colors reflect the variation in fluorescence intensity (after excitation at 633 nm) in descending order from red to yellow, green, blue, and ultraviolet. The chloroplast of an epiphytic alga on the microphyll surface is in the upper left corner of the image. See Sheue et al.-Bizonoplast, a unique chloroplast in the epidermal cells of microphylls in the shade plant Selaginella erythropus (Selaginellaceae), pp. 1922-1929 in this issue. Photo credit: C. R. Sheue, V. Sarafis, C. C. Tsai, and C. H. Lin


[Table of Contents]


HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright © 2008 by the Botanical Society of America, Inc.