Next vesicle SNAP'd up

Next vesicle SNAP'd up

Next vesicle SNAP'd up ecretory vesicles wishing to play follow-the-leader use a particular SNARE to show them where the leader went, as shown by Takahashi et al. on page 255. Vesicles heading to the plasma membrane sometimes selectively bind to another that has already fused there. This process, called sequential exocytosis, is efficient at large-scale secretion because vesicles in the cytosol...

Vesicle transport: Klarsicht clears up the matter

Lipid droplets can be seen to move around on microtubule tracks in a characteristic manner within a developing Drosophila embryo. This phenomenon has allowed genetic studies to be combined with biophysical measurements of single moving droplets, providing a clear view of motor protein control in vivo.

Next-Generation Head-up Displays

Vesicle formation: Dynamic dynamin lives up to its name

The GTP-binding protein dynamin was initially thought to be required for just the final stages of clathrin-dependent vesicle formation, but recent results indicate that it can actually catalyse many of the essential steps in the vesiculation pathway.

Endophilin and Synaptojanin Hook Up to Promote Synaptic Vesicle Endocytosis

Clathrin-mediated endocytosis of synaptic vesicles requires molecular rearrangements of proteins as well as lipids. In this issue of Neuron, Schuske et al. and Verstreken et al. show that the lipid-modifying enzyme endophilin recruits and stabilizes the polyphosphoinositide phosphatase synaptojanin at nerve terminals. This remarkable pairing of two enzymatic activities promotes multiple steps o...