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| ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2008) — Garbage collectors are important for removing trash; without them waste accumulates and can quickly become a health hazard. Similarly, individual cells that make up such biological organisms as humans also have sophisticated methods for managing waste. |
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| The researchers, including postdoctoral fellows Jason MacGurn and Chris Stefan, identified nine related proteins in yeast, which they named the "arrestin-related trafficking" adaptors or ARTs. Each of these proteins identifies and binds to a different set of membrane proteins. Once bound, the ART protein links to an enzyme that attaches a chemical tag for that protein's removal. The ARTs are found in both yeast and humans, suggesting the fundamental nature of their function. Once the protein is tagged, the piece of membrane with the targeted protein forms a packet, called a vesicle, that enters the cell's cytoplasm. There, the vesicle enters a larger membrane body called an endosome, which in turn dumps it into another compartment called the lysosome, where special enzymes break apart big molecules to their core units: proteins to amino acids, membranes to fatty acids, carbohydrates to sugars and nucleic acids to nucleotides, and those basic materials are then reused. The paper in Developmental Cell, co-authored by Emr with postdoctoral fellows David Teis and Suraj Saksena, describes for the first time how a set of four proteins assemble into a highly ordered complex. This complex encircles membrane proteins that must be disposed of in the lysosome. Emr's lab was the first to identify and characterize these protein complexes (known as ESCRTs). The Developmental Cell paper describes the order of events in which the ESCRT complexes encircle and deliver "waste" proteins into vesicles destined for recycling in the lysosome. |
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