ArticlePloS one2007
3-D ultrastructure of O. tauri: electron cryotomography of an entire eukaryotic cell.
Article in PloS one, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 68 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
68 citing papers in PubMed.
- A scoping study of the whole-cell imaging literature as a foundation for the emerging field of cell anatomy.BMC biology · 2026Article
- Cryogenic electron tomography by the numbers: Charting underexplored lineages in structural cell biology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Contrast by electron microscopy in thick biological specimens.Journal of microscopy · 2025Article
- A scoping study of the whole-cell imaging literature: a foundational corpus, potential for mesoscale data synthesis, and implications for standardization of an emerging field.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Multiomics integration unveils photoperiodic plasticity in the molecular rhythms of marine phytoplankton.The Plant cell · 2025Article
- Potassium rhythms couple the circadian clock to the cell cycle.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Viruses infecting a warm water picoeukaryote shed light on spatial co-occurrence dynamics of marine viruses and their hosts.The ISME journal · 2021Article
- Cryo-nanoscale chromosome imaging-future prospects.Biophysical reviews · 2020Review
- Surviving Starvation: Proteomic and Lipidomic Profiling of Nutrient Deprivation in the Smallest Known Free-Living Eukaryote.Metabolites · 2020Article
- Spatial chloroplast-to-nucleus signalling involving plastid-nuclear complexes and stromules.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Investigating eukaryotic cells with cryo-ET.Molecular biology of the cell · 2020Article
- Visualization of Viral Infection Dynamics in a Unicellular Eukaryote and Quantification of Viral Production Using Virus FluorescenceFrontiers in microbiology · 2020Article
- Article
- Models of Intracellular Transport: Pros and Cons.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2019Article
- Agitation Modules: Flexible Means to Accelerate Automated Freeze Substitution.The journal of histochemistry and cytochemistry : official journal of the Histochemistry Society · 2018Article
- Elusive data underlying debate at the prokaryote-eukaryote divide.Biology direct · 2018Article
- Natural chromatin is heterogeneous and self-associates in vitro.Molecular biology of the cell · 2018Article
- Flagellum couples cell shape to motility inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- The role of electron irradiation history in liquid cell transmission electron microscopy.Science advances · 2018Article
- Glycerolipid Characterization and Nutrient Deprivation-Associated Changes in the Green PicoalgaPlant physiology · 2017Article
8 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The hallmark of eukaryotic cells is their segregation of key biological functions into discrete, membrane-bound organelles. Creating accurate models of their ultrastructural complexity has been difficult in part because of the limited resolution of light microscopy and the artifact-prone nature of conventional electron microscopy. Here we explored the potential of the emerging technology electron cryotomography to produce three-dimensional images of an entire eukaryotic cell in a near-native state. Ostreococcus tauri was chosen as the specimen because as a unicellular picoplankton with just one copy of each organelle, it is the smallest known eukaryote and was therefore likely to yield the highest resolution images. Whole cells were imaged at various stages of the cell cycle, yielding 3-D reconstructions of complete chloroplasts, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticula, Golgi bodies, peroxisomes, microtubules, and putative ribosome distributions in-situ. Surprisingly, the nucleus was seen to open long before mitosis, and while one microtubule (or two in some predivisional cells) was consistently present, no mitotic spindle was ever observed, prompting speculation that a single microtubule might be sufficient to segregate multiple chromosomes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.