Lelio Orci, the modern master of morphology

Abstract

Lelio Orci has made seminal contributions to our understanding of pancreatic islet structure and function. He introduced quantitative criteria to structural analysis in the study of endocrine pancreas in a series of works performed in collaboration with Albert Renold, Roger Unger, and Donald Steiner. Orci has moved islet cell morphology from the primitive era of histochemistry and electron microscopy into the modern era of cell biology, applying the most advanced techniques and covering every aspect of normal and pathological structure-function relationships. In collaboration with James Rothman in New York and Randy Schekman in Berkley, Orci discovered that the transport steps from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi complex, and within the Golgi, are mediated by two sets of vesicles coated with protein envelopes different from clathrin.

Keywords: Golgi apparatus; cell biology; history of medicine; pancreas.