Researchers have identified a protein that plays a central and hitherto-undescribed role in glucose trafficking in humans but isn't even expressed in mice, they report in this week's __Science__. "We always knew that mice and humans were different from each other," said Yale Medical School cell biologist linkurl:Jonathan Bogan,;http://www.cellbiology.yale.edu/faculty/bogan_j/bogan_j.html who was not involved in the study. "This gives us some insight into perhaps how, specifically, they're different." The protein, called CHC22, is an isoform of the membrane protein clathrin, which forms a proteinaceous coat around vesicles containing the glucose transport molecule GLUT4, in muscle and fat cells. "We think [CHC]22 is involved in helping these vesicles form," said linkurl:Frances Brodsky,;http://brodsky.ucsf.edu/frances_brodsky.asp a cell biologist from the University of California, San Francisco, who led the study, adding that the protein may also help to stabilize already-formed vesicles. GLUT4 is found in muscle and fat cells, translocating to the plasma membrane in response...
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