Organellar relationships in the Golgi region of the pancreatic beta cell line, HIT-T15, visualized by high resolution electron tomography.

ABSTRACT: The positional relationships among all of the visible organelles in a densely packed region of cytoplasm from an insulin secreting, cultured mammalian cell have been analyzed in three dimensions (3-D) at approximately 6 nm resolution. Part of a fast frozen/freeze-substituted HIT-T15 cell that included a large portion of the Golgi ribbon was reconstructed in 3-D by electron tomography. The reconstructed volume (3.1 x 3.2 x 1.2 microm(3)) allowed sites of interaction between organelles, and between microtubules and organellar membranes, to be accurately defined in 3-D and quantitatively analyzed by spatial density analyses. Our data confirm that the Golgi in an interphase mammalian cell is a single, ribbon-like organelle composed of stacks of flattened cisternae punctuated by openings of var

SUBMITTER: Marsh BJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC30150 | biostudies-literature | 2001 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature