Mitotic Disassembly and Reassembly of the Golgi Apparatus

The Golgi apparatus has a distinctive and dynamic architecture. In animal cells during interphase, it forms a pericentriolar ribbon that bifurcates and rejoins several microns in length (Rambourg and Clermont 1990). This ribbon is made up of smaller building blocks, each of which consists of a stack of three or more cisternae 0.5-1 μim in diameter. To construct the entire Golgi apparatus, equivalent cisternae in individual stacks are linked by tubules. Within each stack, the central portions of cisternae are flattened and closely apposed to one another, and cisternal rims are often fenestrated. The rim is the site of both budding and fusion of transport vesicles. Tubular networks (the cis and trans Golgi networks) are present on both sides of the stack (Griffiths and Simons 1986; Banfield et al. 1994).