Colon cancer normally takes many years to develop, and many cases are believed to arise from adenomatous polyps. These polyps are glandular in origin. Because of their tendency toward malignancy, adenomatous polyps are usually removed when they are discovered. Colonoscopy, which involves the examination of the colon with a camera mounted on a flexible tube, is generally necessary to diagnose or rule out the presence of polyps or cancerous tumors.

In order to visualize lectin binding to the Golgi complex in a sample of rat colon, the tissue section above was treated with wheat germ agglutinin conjugated to Texas Red. The cells were subsequently counterstained with Alexa Fluor 488 conjugated to phalloidin to localize the filamentous actin network, and the nucleic acid stain Hoechst 33332 to label DNA in the nucleus. Images were recorded in grayscale with a 12-bit digital camera coupled to a Nikon Eclipse 80i microscope equipped with bandpass emission fluorescence filter optical blocks. During the processing stage, individual image channels were pseudocolored with RGB values corresponding to each of the fluorophore emission spectral profiles.