October 2006 | Volume 4 | Issue 10 | e359 | e364 Fusion of two plasma membranes is central to exocytosis, the process by which a cell secretes neurotransmitters, digestive enzymes, and other products. If you believe the simple diagrams in introductory biology textbooks, you’d think this fusion occurs as soon as two membranes touch. Not so—in fact, membrane fusion requires interaction among a co...

October 2006 | Volume 4 | Issue 10 | e359 | e364 Fusion of two plasma membranes is central to exocytosis, the process by which a cell secretes neurotransmitters, digestive enzymes, and other products. If you believe the simple diagrams in introductory biology textbooks, you’d think this fusion occurs as soon as two membranes touch. Not so—in fact, membrane fusion requires interaction among a co...

October 2006 | Volume 4 | Issue 10 | e359 | e364 Fusion of two plasma membranes is central to exocytosis, the process by which a cell secretes neurotransmitters, digestive enzymes, and other products. If you believe the simple diagrams in introductory biology textbooks, you’d think this fusion occurs as soon as two membranes touch. Not so—in fact, membrane fusion requires interaction among a co...

The SM protein UNC-18 has been proposed to regulate several aspects of secretion, including synaptic vesicle docking, priming, and fusion. Here, we show that UNC-18 has a chaperone function in neurons, promoting anterograde transport of the plasma membrane soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE) protein Syntaxin-1. In unc-18 mutants, UNC-64 (Caenorhabditis ...

Autophagy is a process delivering cytoplasmic components to lysosomes for degradation. Autophagy may, however, play a role in unconventional secretion of leaderless cytosolic proteins. How secretory autophagy diverges from degradative autophagy remains unclear. Here we show that in response to lysosomal damage, the prototypical cytosolic secretory autophagy cargo IL-1β is recognized by speciali...

Syntaxin-1 is a component of the synaptic vesicle docking and/or membrane fusion soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment receptor (SNARE) complex (7S and 20S complexes) in nerve terminals. Syntaxin-1 also forms a heterodimer with Munc18/n-Sec1/rbSec1 in a complex that is distinct from the 7S and 20S complexes. In this report, we identify a novel syntaxin-1-binding protein, tomosyn,...

October 2006 | Volume 4 | Issue 10 | e359 | e364 Fusion of two plasma membranes is central to exocytosis, the process by which a cell secretes neurotransmitters, digestive enzymes, and other products. If you believe the simple diagrams in introductory biology textbooks, you’d think this fusion occurs as soon as two membranes touch. Not so—in fact, membrane fusion requires interaction among a co...

October 2006 | Volume 4 | Issue 10 | e359 | e364 Fusion of two plasma membranes is central to exocytosis, the process by which a cell secretes neurotransmitters, digestive enzymes, and other products. If you believe the simple diagrams in introductory biology textbooks, you’d think this fusion occurs as soon as two membranes touch. Not so—in fact, membrane fusion requires interaction among a co...

October 2006 | Volume 4 | Issue 10 | e359 | e364 Fusion of two plasma membranes is central to exocytosis, the process by which a cell secretes neurotransmitters, digestive enzymes, and other products. If you believe the simple diagrams in introductory biology textbooks, you’d think this fusion occurs as soon as two membranes touch. Not so—in fact, membrane fusion requires interaction among a co...