Placental Stereology: Spanning the Levels from Molecule to Whole Organ (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION A valuable characteristic of stereology is its ability to provide functionally-relevant quantitative information at different levels of structural organization. Coupled with appropriate sampling procedures, stereological estimation permits 3D quantification of the sizes, spatial contents and relationships of molecules, organelles, cells, tissues, organs and organisms (Howard and Reed, 2005). Over the past 20 years, technical developments have improved these procedures and formalised optimal methods. During the past 30 years, with the aid of many excellent colleagues, I have applied established methods to study organ function and developed novel methods for studying subcellular localization of interesting marker probes.