Protein transport from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to the Golgi apparatus is mediated by coat complex II (COPII) vesicles. It has been believed that COPII vesicles containing cargo are released from the ER exit sites (ERES) into the cytosol and then reach and fuse with the first post-ER compartment, cis-Golgi or ER-to-Golgi intermediate compartment (ERGIC). However, it still remains elusive ...

How intracellular transport controls the probability that cargos switch at intersections between filaments is not well understood. In one hypothesis some motors on the cargo attach to one filament while others attach to the intersecting filament, and the ensuing tug-of-war determines which filament is chosen. We investigate this hypothesis using 3D computer simulations, and discover that switch...

While most in vitro experiments with motor proteins focus on the behavior of individual motors, in cells most cargo are transported by multiple motors and even multiple classes of motor. How these motors cooperate and compete in transporting cargo is not clear. Recent experimental and theoretical work suggests that motors attached to a given cargo interact in both expected and unexpected ways.

UNLABELLED Swarming bacteria are challenged by the need to invade hostile environments. Swarms of the flagellated bacterium Paenibacillus vortex can collectively transport other microorganisms. Here we show that P. vortex can invade toxic environments by carrying antibiotic-degrading bacteria; this transport is mediated by a specialized, phenotypic subpopulation utilizing a process not dependen...

Air cargo parties are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of IT and, increasingly, they understand the value that IOS could provide for the total value chain performance. However, whereas in other sectors IOS has scored big successes, there are only fragmented examples of successful global systems in the air cargo community and the penetration of IT in the air cargo industry is by no ...

Adrenal chromaffin cells release hormones and neuropeptides that are essential for physiological homeostasis. During this process, secretory granules fuse with the plasma membrane and deliver their cargo to the extracellular space. It was once believed that fusion was the final regulated step in exocytosis, resulting in uniform and total release of granule cargo. Recent evidence argues for nonu...

Molecular motor proteins serve as an essential component of intracellular transport by generating forces to haul cargoes along cytoskeletal filaments. Two species of motors that are directed oppositely (e.g. kinesin, dynein) can be attached to the same cargo, which is known to produce bidirectional net motion. Although previous work focuses on the motor number as the driving noise source for sw...

Nervous system function requires intracellular transport of channels, receptors, mRNAs, and other cargo throughout complex neuronal morphologies. Local signals such as synaptic input can regulate cargo trafficking, motivating the leading conceptual model of neuron-wide transport, sometimes called the 'sushi-belt model' (Doyle and Kiebler, 2011). Current theories and experiments are based on thi...

Vast numbers of proteins are transported into and out of the nuclei by approximately 20 species of importin-β family nucleocytoplasmic transport receptors. However, the significance of the multiple parallel transport pathways that the receptors constitute is poorly understood because only limited numbers of cargo proteins have been reported. Here, we identified cargo proteins specific to the 12...

The accurate formation of synaptic vesicles (SVs) and incorporation of their protein cargo during endocytosis is critical for the maintenance of neurotransmission. During intense neuronal activity, a transient and acute accumulation of SV cargo occurs at the plasma membrane. Activity-dependent bulk endocytosis (ADBE) is the dominant SV endocytosis mode under these conditions; however, it is cur...