On the future contents of a small journal of histochemistry

Impact of Histochemistry on biomedical research: looking through the articles published in a long-established histochemical journal

Histochemistry provides the unique opportunity to detect single molecules in the very place where they exert their structural roles or functional activities: this makes it possible to correlate structural organization and function, and may be fruitfully exploited in countless biomedical research topics. Aiming to estimate the impact of histochemical articles in the biomedical field, the last few years citations of articles published in a long-established histochemical journal have been considered. This brief survey suggests that histochemical journals, especially the ones open to a large spectrum of research subjects, do represent an irreplaceable source of information not only for cell biologists, microscopists or anatomists, but also for biochemists, molecular biologists and biotechnologists.

Histochemistry as an irreplaceable approach for investigating functional cytology and histology

In agreement with the evolution of histochemistry over the last fifty years and thanks to the impressive advancements in microscopy sciences, the application of cytochemical techniques to light and electron microscopy is more and more addressed to elucidate the functional characteristics of cells and tissue under different physiological, pathological or experimental conditions. Simultaneously, the mere description of composition and morphological features has become increasingly sporadic in the histochemical literature. Since basic research on cell functional organization is essential for understanding the mechanisms responsible for major biological processes such as differentiation or growth control in normal and tumor tissues, histochemical Journals will continue to play a pivotal role in the field of cell and tissue biology in all its structural and functional aspects.