45^th Anniversary Journal of Histotechnology special issue on eyes

This 45^th Anniversary of the Journal of Histotechnology is being celebrated with a special issue on eyes. This topic was suggested by Dr. Yongfu Wang, an Associate Editor late in 2021 as a way to celebrate this occasion. Dr. Wang and Dr. Sanming Li served as the guest editors for this momentous issue and both are familiar with histotechniques for eye samples. A huge thank you goes out to them as this took a good deal of their time to work with the submitted and invited manuscripts. Histotechnicians in research and clinical disciplines are very aware of how difficult it is to maintain intact layers of an eyeball or even portions of an eyeball (iris, corneas) from animal model and human eyes when doing microtomy. Presented here are several highly sophisticated methods and materials to obtain good sections of eyes or portions of eyes for studies of eye diseases. The Wang group from Stowers Research Institute used a unique freeze substitution approach with a solvent-glyoxal fixative to prevent distortion of murine eyeballs. Delicate neuro-retinal explants are difficult to work with but the Shamir group developed methods to maintain the integrity of these very small samples. Their methods and materials provide highly detailed descriptions for handling explants from fixation to microtomy with excellent illustrations and are useful not only for retinal explants but can be applied when working with other tissue explants. The paper by Zu-Guo and colleagues shows how drugs used for Traditional Chinese Methods can be used to treat a depressive disorder with related dry eye disease in a murine model. It comes to light that natural product drug discovery is ongoing in the pharmaceutical industry to find treatments of various diseases [1]. A very nice case history for a diagnosis and treatment of Mooren’s ulcer is presented by Zhang and colleagues. This included various instrumental eye examinations, an illustrated eye surgery for sample removal for histological preparation, a corneal transplant and grafting procedure and a 3 month follow up during the healing process.

An article of great importance is on reproducibility in studies used slide-based histology by Dr. Luis Chiroboga, Dr. Yongfu Wang, Liz Chlipala and Gayle Callis. Helping write with the three very experienced researchers proved to be interesting for me, personally, since I had to wear an ‘Author’ hat rather than an ‘Editor’ hat. This topic is very important to maintain transparency and reproducibility of materials and methods but also to create a usable, flexible guide to maintain records to write a manuscript for other research. Reproducibility is discussed at great lengths in the literature as seen in the extensive reference list. Many journals now pay a great deal of attention to reproducible methods and materials in their publications and JOH is no exception. Readers of JOH publications should be able to use methods and materials and have the similar results as reported by authors.

This issue also brings an end of an era with publication of the last two Test Your Knowledge (TYK) articles. The TYK is being replaced by peer reviewed Short Communications which are very brief commentaries on topics related to histotechnology as listed in the JOH Aim and Scope. Formatting instructions for Short Communications will be listed in JOH Instructions for Authors. The National Society for Histotechnology now uses peer reviewed publications for the Members Only Journal of Histotechnology Article Quiz found at https://elearn.nsh.org/quiz. Short Communications can also be used to create quizzes. For all who have graciously submitted a TYK to JOH over the years, we thank you for taking the time to do this. We now invite you to submit a Short Communication. For the NSH members who have not taken an article quiz, do so, to broaden your knowledge and receive the free CEU. Out of curiosity, I recently took a quiz and was pleased I passed with the correct answers. As always, JOH will continue to have publications that are educational.