The scientific article entitled “Preparation of Rice Straw Tissue for Reproducible Imaging and Analysis by Electron Microscopy” was published in the reputable research journal Current Protocols (December 2025), in the field of laboratory methods and protocols.
According to the Public Relations Office of Shahid Beheshti University, the article is the result of research conducted by Mahta Mohammadi, Naser Farrokhi, Pär K. Ingvarsson, Asadollah Ahmadi-Khan, and Mehdi Jahanfar, affiliated with the Group of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Shahid Beheshti University (Tehran, Iran), and the Department of Plant Biology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Uppsala, Sweden).
The cover images of this issue of Current Protocols were produced using electron microscopy at Shahid Beheshti University’s Central Laboratory, and have played an important role in showcasing the University’s research capabilities and infrastructure.
In the article, the researchers examine common problems in processing biological specimens for scanning electron microscopy (SEM), including cell collapse and the degradation of tissue structures. To address these challenges, dried rice stems were used and a defined set of protocols was developed for processing dried plant samples.
In this method, the dried stems are subjected to reverse dehydration (rehydration) using a glycerol solution and are then fixed with a formalin–acetic acid–alcohol (FAA) solution—an approach that prevents the collapse of cell walls and deformation of plant organs.
The protocols presented in this article are described as the first published method for SEM preparation and imaging of dried plant tissue, offering a cost-effective approach for obtaining high-quality micrographs. This achievement can contribute meaningfully to reconstructing plant growth processes and to studying the characteristics of the cell wall.