Laser ablation tomography (LATscan) as a new tool for anatomical studies of woody plants

Summary Traditionally, botanists study the anatomy of plants by carefully sectioning samples, histological staining to highlight tissues of interests, then imaging slides under light microscopy. This approach generates significant details; however, this traditional workflow is laborious and time consuming, and ultimately yields two-dimensional (2D) images. Laser Ablation Tomography (LATscan) is a high-throughput imaging system that yields hundreds of images per minute. This method has proven useful for studying the structure of delicate plant tissues, however its utility in understanding the structure of tougher woody tissues is underexplored. We report LATscan-derived anatomical data from several woody stems (ca. 20 mm) of eight species and compare these results to those obtained through traditional anatomical techniques. LATscan successfully allows the description of tissue composition by differentiating cell type, size, and shape, but also permits the recognition of distinct cell wall composition (e.g., lignin, suberin, cellulose) based on differential fluorescent signals on unstained samples. LATscan generate high-resolution 2D images and 3D reconstructions of woody plant samples, therefore this new technology is useful for both qualitative and quantitative analyses. This high-throughput imaging technology has the potential to bolster phenotyping of vegetative and reproductive anatomy, wood anatomy, and other biological systems such as plant-pathogen and parasitic plant associations.