Front and back views of a 3D model of the Golgi region in an insulin-secreting, mammalian cell. Three serial 400-nm-thick sections cut from a high pressure frozen, freeze-substituted and plastic-embedded HIT-T15 cell were reconstructed by dual axis EM tomography.  The software package IMOD was used to model all visible objects within the resulting reconstructed volume (3.1 x 3.2 x 1.2 um3). The Golgi complex with seven cisternae (C1-C7) is at the center.  The color coding is as follows: C1, light blue; C2, pink; C3, cherry red; C4, green; C5, dark blue; C6, gold; C7, bright red.  The Golgi is displayed in the context of all surrounding organelles, vesicles, ribosomes, and microtubules: endoplasmic reticulum (ER), yellow; membrane-bound ribosomes, blue; free ribosomes, orange; microtubules, bright green; dense core vesicles, bright blue; clathrin-negative vesicles, white; clathrin-positive compartments and vesicles, bright red; clathrin-negative compartments and vesicles, purple; mitochondria, dark green. Bar, 500 nm.

Image courtesy of Dr. Brad Marsh, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland, Australia.  Originally published in the Inaugural Article: Organellar relationships in the Golgi region of the pancreatic beta cell line, HIT-T15, visualized by high resolution electron tomography.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (February 27, 2001)—volume 98, no. 5, pp 2399-2406. © 2001 National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A.