Cellular transport and secretion

Cells constantly shuttle proteins, lipids, and other cargo between their internal compartments and the outside world through a coordinated system of membrane-bound vesicles. The machinery driving this traffic — including clathrin coats that pinch vesicles off membranes, Rab GTPases that direct where those vesicles go, SNARE proteins that fuse them to their targets, and phosphoinositide lipids that mark each compartment's identity — must operate with remarkable precision to sustain everything from nutrient uptake to immune signaling. Disruptions in these pathways underlie a broad range of diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders, lysosomal storage diseases, and cancer, making mechanistic clarity medically consequential. Active research is working to resolve how the ESCRT machinery remodels membranes during endosomal sorting and multivesicular body formation, and how cells dynamically rewire their trafficking networks in response to stress or infection.

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82,366

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2,781,713

Keywords

EndocytosisMembrane FusionRab ProteinsClathrin-Mediated EndocytosisSNARE ProteinsESCRT Machinery