Lysosomal protein trafficking is a fundamental process conserved from yeast to humans. This conservation extends to lysosome-like organelles such as mammalian melanosomes and insect eye pigment granules. Recently, eye and coat color mutations in mouse (mocha and pearl) and Drosophila (garnet and carmine) were shown to affect subunits of the heterotetrameric adaptor protein complex AP-3 involved...

BACKGROUND Intracellular transport involves the movement of organelles along microtubules (MTs) or actin filaments (AFs) by means of opposite-polarity MT motors or actin-dependent motors of the myosin family. The correct delivery of organelles to their different destinations involves a precise coordination of the two transport systems. Such coordination could occur through regulation of the den...

The radial array of cytoplasmic microtubules (MTs) provides routes for intracellular transport and defines spatial organization of cytoplasm through interaction with molecular motors bound to membrane organelles (Kellogg et al., 1994; Hirokawa, 1998). The array is believed to be organized by the centrosome, which is capable of nucleating MTs. Our recent studies of pigment transport (Rodionov an...

Natrix piscator like other snakes undergoes sloughing at regular intervals. The inter-sloughl period shows marked variations though is in general 20 days ; 2 days. Each inter-slough period may be divided into six stages. During each such cycle snakes show remarkable chanlges in the color of the body dorsally and the eye spectacles. These changes have a direct relationship with various stages of...

A One and half year-old female child born out of 2consanguineous marriage came with multiple hypopigmented patches over the face, trunk lower limbs. There was history recurrent upper respiratory tract infections. On examination she had silvery grey hair, mild hepatomegaly. Ophthalmological revealed oculocutaneous albinism. Skin biopsy showed coarse clumps melanin pigment in epidermis. Hair moun...

The intestinal cells of Caenorhabditis elegans embryos contain prominent, birefringent gut granules that we show are lysosome-related organelles. Gut granules are labeled by lysosomal markers, and their formation is disrupted in embryos depleted of AP-3 subunits, VPS-16, and VPS-41. We define a class of gut granule loss (glo) mutants that are defective in gut granule biogenesis. We show that th...

BACKGROUND/AIM Considering available literature lipofuscin is a classical age pigment of postmitotic cells, and a consistently recognized phenomenon in humans and animals. Lipofuscin accumulation is characteristic for nerve cells that are postmitotic. This research was focused on lipofuscin accumulation in ganglionic cells (GC) (postganglionic sympathetic cell bodies) of superior cervical gangl...