Herpesviruses use a vesicle-mediated transfer of intranuclearly assembled nucleocapsids through the nuclear envelope (NE) for final maturation in the cytoplasm. The molecular basis for this novel vesicular nucleo-cytoplasmic transport is beginning to be elucidated in detail. The heterodimeric viral nuclear egress complex (NEC), conserved within the classical herpesviruses, mediates vesicle form...

The adhesion of fluid vesicles at chemically structured substrates is studied theoretically via Monte Carlo simulations. The substrate surface is planar and repels the vesicle membrane apart from a single surface domain gamma , which strongly attracts this membrane. If the vesicle is larger than the attractive gamma domain, the spreading of the vesicle onto the substrate is restricted by the si...

Neurons in the central nervous system communicate by transmitting electrical signals at special sites of contact called synapses. Synapses contain neurotransmitter-filled synaptic vesicles, which fuse with the presynaptic plasma membrane. The neurotransmitter diffuses to the neighboring neuron and triggers a new electrical signal. In order to maintain synaptic transmission, the synaptic vesicle...

After synaptic vesicle exocytosis, synaptic vesicle proteins must be retrieved from the plasma membrane, sorted away from other membrane proteins, and reconstituted into a functional synaptic vesicle. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is an organism well suited for a genetic analysis of this process. In particular, three types of genetic studies have contributed to our understanding of synapt...

Coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations are performed to obtain the phase diagram for shapes of a vesicle with a variation in temperature and pressure difference across the membrane. Various interesting vesicle shapes are found, in particular, a series of shape transformations are observed for a vesicle with an initial spherical shape, which changes to a prolate shape, then an oblate shap...

Tethering factors have been shown to interact with Rabs and SNAREs and, more recently, with coat proteins. Coat proteins are required for cargo selection and membrane deformation to bud a transport vesicle from a donor compartment. It was once thought that a vesicle must uncoat before it recognizes its target membrane. However, recent findings have revealed a role for the coat in directing a ve...

We theoretically study (i) a large membrane segment and (ii) a closed membrane surface or vesicle that adhere to another surface. The membrane segment can undergo unbinding transitions as a result of thermally excited shape fluctuations. These transitions are studied by renormalization group methods and by Monte Carlo simulations. The shape of a bound vesicle is determined by the interplay of b...

The distribution of two synaptic vesicle-specific phosphoproteins, synaptophysin and synapsin I, during intense quantal secretion was studied by applying an immunogold labeling technique to ultrathin frozen sections. In nerve-muscle preparations treated for 1 h with a low dose of alpha-latrotoxin in the absence of extracellular Ca2+ (a condition under which nerve terminals are depleted of both ...