期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2020
卷号：117
期号：1
页码：15-17
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1920094117
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：On October 22, 2019, the international community of cell biologists lost one of its most eminent members, an exceptional scientist whose consummate mastery of cell membrane morphology contributed fundamental insights to our understanding of the microanatomy and function of the endocrine pancreas, as well as the molecular mechanisms of protein secretion. Born in San Giovanni Incarico (Frosinone, Italy) on March 22, 1937, Lelio Orci obtained his medical doctorate at the Faculty of Medicine of Rome University in 1964. After moving to the Medical School of the University of Geneva in 1966, he was named Assistant Professor at the Institute of Histology and Embryology in 1967. An impressive scientific productivity driven by an outstanding talent earned him a full professorship a few years later, then the Chairmanship of the Department of Morphology (now Department of Cell Physiology and Metabolism) of the University of Geneva, until his retirement in the early 2000 with the title of Professor Emeritus (Fig. 1). Fig. 1. Lelio Orci in Paros, Greece (2016). Image courtesy of Roberto Montesano. The leading motif of Orci’s career was a constant drive to understand in minute detail the relationship between cell structure and function, using light and electron microscopy and a variety of cell biological techniques that were complemented later, in the course of collaborative works, by the application of the tools of biochemistry and molecular genetics. In the first phase of his career, Orci unraveled, with exquisitely refined immunocytochemical techniques, the complex organization of the pancreatic islets of Langerhans with its four distinctive endocrine cell types present in different relative proportion, depending on the dual embryonic origin of the islets. This epoch was also characterized by the identification of a whole panel of endocrine cells in the gastrointestinal tract, which has been considered since then as a fully equipped endocrine organ.
