Endocytosis in real time

The endocytosis pathway involves multiple protein-protein interactions and has proven difficult to investigate. Two years ago David Drubin and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley began to unravel the details of early endocytosis in yeast using live-cell imaging of six proteins involved in the pathway. The researchers recently extended the approach to examine 61 yeast-deletion mutants and determined the function of clathrin in yeast endocytosis. They also elucidated the assembly of four endocytotic protein modules.1

Faculty of 1000 reviewer Michael Ehlers, a neurobiologist and cell biologist at Duke University Medical Center, calls it, ?a particularly powerful example of directly visualizing the movement of many proteins acting in concert.?

?They were able to reproducibly examine the quantitative dynamics of individual proteins that get recruited to the specific active patch on yeast where endocytosis occurs. Because it?s yeast, one can look across different cells and see very reproducible patterns...