We are living in an exciting era in science, characterized by the development and application of revolutionary techniques that have underpinned the exploration of uncharted territories in plant cell biology. Despite these advances, many fundamental questions about organelle biology remain to be answered, for example, the mechanisms by which organelles establish and maintain their identity, and ensure their proper inheritance during cell division. Plants present unique challenges in this research arena. We know that plants have unique organelles, and whilst we know that plants share some key elements of organelle biology with other eukaryotes, fundamental differences between plants and nonplant model species are also being uncovered.

This special issue will focus on the knowns and unknowns relating to organelle biogenesis in plants, including their relationships with each other and with other cellular components, their division and inheritance, and the intracellular trafficking of their protein constituents. We expect this special issue to serve as an international forum for researchers to either propose novel findings or review the most recent developments and ideas in the field. Special emphasis will be given to experimental and technical results achieved within the past five years.

The topics to be covered include, but are not limited to:

• Organelle biogenesis
• Organelle positioning
• Intracellular protein targeting and trafficking
• Membrane biology
• Tools to study plant organelle biogenesis
• Future strategies

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jb/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: