In Vivo Aniline Blue Staining and Semiautomated Quantification of Callose Deposition at Plasmodesmata

The deposition and turnover of callose (beta-1,3 glucan polymer) in the cell wall surrounding the neck regions of plasmodesmata (PD) controls the cell-to-cell diffusion rate of molecules and, therefore, plays an important role in the regulation of intercellular communication in Plants.Here we describe a simple and fast in vivo staining procedure for the imaging and quantification of callose at PD. We also introduce calloseQuant, a plug-in for semiautomated image analysis and non-biased quantification of callose levels at PD using ImageJ.