Mitotic Golgi clusters are not tubular endosomes

Abstract

HeLa cells were incubated with 15 nm BSA-gold for 1 or 2 hours to mark the endocytic pathway and mitotic cells were then isolated by shake-off. Thin, frozen sections were labelled with antibodies against two resident Golgi markers, beta-(1,4)-galactosyltransferase and N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase I. Detection of the latter was aided by the use of a HeLa cell line stably expressing a myc-tagged version of the endogenous protein. The secondary antibodies were coupled to either 5 or 10 nm gold so that the distribution of each of the three markers could be followed. Qualitative and quantitative studies showed that there were two populations of clusters, those described by us earlier and termed Golgi clusters (Lucocq et al. (1987) J. Cell Biol. 104, 865–874), containing either or both Golgi markers, and clusters of tubular endosomes containing BSA-gold. There was very little overlap showing that Golgi clusters cannot be tubular endosomes as concluded by Tooze and Hollinshead (1992) Eur. J. Cell Biol. 58, 228–242.