Visualizing the Cisternal Organization of Golgi Ministacks in HeLa Cells by Side-averaging

The mammalian Golgi complex consists of laterally connected Golgi stacks, each comprising close-packed and flattened membrane sacks called cisternae. However, the convoluted spatial organization of Golgi stacks and limited resolution of light microscopy prevent us from resolving the cisternal organization of the Golgi. Here, we describe our recently developed side-averaging approach coupled with Airyscan microscopy to visualize the cisternal organization of nocodazole-induced Golgi ministacks. First, the nocodazole treatment greatly simplifies the organization of Golgi stacks by spatially separating the crowded and amorphous Golgi complex into individual disk-shaped ministacks. The treatment also makes it possible to identify en face and side-views of Golgi ministacks. Next, after manually selecting the side-view Golgi ministack images, they are transformed and aligned. Finally, the resulting images are averaged to enhance the common structural features and suppress the morphological variations among individual Golgi ministacks. This protocol describes how to image and analyze the intra-Golgi localization of giantin, GalT-mCherry, GM130, and GFP-OSBP in HeLa cells by side-averaging. Graphical abstract.