Cargo selection in the early secretory pathway of African trypanosomes

Membrane and secretory proteins are synthesized by ribosomes and then enter the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) where they undergo glycosylation and quality control for proper folding. Subsequently, proteins are transported to the Golgi apparatus and then sorted to the plasma membrane or intracellular organelles. Transport vesicles are formed at ER-exit sites (ERES) on the ER with several coat protein complexes. Cargo proteins loaded into the vesicles are selected by specific interactions with cargo receptors and/or adaptors during vesicle formation. p24 family and intracellular lectin ERGIC-53-membrane proteins are the known cargo receptors acting in the early secretory pathway (ER-Golgi). Oligomerization of the cargo receptors have been suggested to play an important role in cargo selection and sorting via posttranslational modifications in fungi and metazoans. On the other hand, the mechanisms involved in the early secretory pathway in protozoa remain unclear. In this review, we focus on Trypanosoma brucei as a representative of protozoan and discuss differences and commonalities in the molecular mechanisms of its early secretory pathway compared with other organisms.

Structure Versus Stochasticity-The Role of Molecular Crowding and Intrinsic Disorder in Membrane Fission

Cellular membranes must undergo remodeling to facilitate critical functions including membrane trafficking, organelle biogenesis, and cell division. An essential step in membrane remodeling is membrane fission, in which an initially continuous membrane surface is divided into multiple, separate compartments. The established view has been that membrane fission requires proteins with conserved structural features such as helical scaffolds, hydrophobic insertions, and polymerized assemblies. In this review, we discuss these structure-based fission mechanisms and highlight recent findings from several groups that support an alternative, structure-independent mechanism of membrane fission. This mechanism relies on lateral collisions among crowded, membrane-bound proteins to generate sufficient steric pressure to drive membrane vesiculation. As a stochastic process, this mechanism contrasts with the paradigm that deterministic protein structures are required to drive fission, raising the prospect that many more proteins may participate in fission than previously thought. Paradoxically, our recent work suggests that intrinsically disordered domains may be among the most potent drivers of membrane fission, owing to their large hydrodynamic radii and substantial chain entropy. This stochastic view of fission also suggests new roles for the structure-based fission proteins. Specifically, we hypothesize that in addition to driving fission directly, the canonical fission machines may facilitate the enrichment and organization of bulky disordered protein domains in order to promote membrane fission by locally amplifying protein crowding.

Traffic of p24 Proteins and COPII Coat Composition Mutually Influence Membrane Scaffolding

Eukaryotic protein secretion requires efficient and accurate delivery of diverse secretory and membrane proteins. This process initiates in the ER, where vesicles are sculpted by the essential COPII coat. The Sec13p subunit of the COPII coat contributes to membrane scaffolding, which enforces curvature on the nascent vesicle. A requirement for Sec13p can be bypassed when traffic of lumenally oriented membrane proteins is abrogated. Here we sought to further explore the impact of cargo proteins on vesicle formation. We show that efficient ER export of the p24 family of proteins is a major driver of the requirement for Sec13p. The scaffolding burden presented by the p24 complex is met in part by the cargo adaptor Lst1p, which binds to a subset of cargo, including the p24 proteins. We propose that the scaffolding function of Lst1p is required to generate vesicles that can accommodate difficult cargo proteins that include large oligomeric assemblies and asymmetrically distributed membrane proteins. Vesicles that contain such cargoes are also more dependent on scaffolding by Sec13p, and may serve as a model for large carrier formation in other systems.