We were asked to write a Preview piece for Developmental Cell. Two interesting papers which deal with the insertion of amphipathic helices in membranes to influence membrane curvature during endocytosis were scheduled for publication and the journal wanted some “front matter” to promote them.
Our Preview is paywalled – sorry about that – but I can briefly tell you why these two papers are worth a read.
The first paper – a collaboration between EMBL scientists led by Marko Kaksonen – deals with the yeast proteins Ent1 and Sla2. Ent1 has an ENTH domain and Sla2 has an ANTH domain. ENTH stands for Epsin N-terminal homology whereas ANTH means AP180 N-terminal homology. These two domains are known to bind membrane and in the case of ENTH to tubulate and vesiculate giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs). Ent1 does this via an amphipathic helix “Helix 0” that inserts into the outer leaflet to bend the membrane. The new paper shows that Ent1 and Sla2 can bind together (regulated by PIP2) and that ANTH regulates ENTH so that it doesn’t make lots of vesicles, instead the two team up to make regular membrane tubules. The tubules are decorated with a regular “coat” of these adaptor proteins. This coat could prepattern the clathrin lattice. Also, because Sla2 links to actin, then actin can presumably pull on this lattice to help drive the formation of a new vesicle. The regular spacing might distribute the forces evenly over large expanses of membrane.
The second paper – from David Owen’s lab at CIMR in Cambridge – shows that CALM (a protein with an ANTH domain) actually has a secret Helix 0! They show that this forms on contact with lipid. CALM influences the size of clathrin-coated pits and vesicles, by influencing curvature. They propose a model where cargo size needs to be matched to vesicle size, simply due to the energetics of pit formation. The idea is that cells do this by regulating the ratio of AP2 to CALM.
You can read our preview and the papers by Skruzny et al and Miller et al in the latest issue of Dev Cell.
—
The post title and the title of our Preview is taken from “Zero Tolerance” by Death from their Symbolic LP. I didn’t want to be outdone by these Swedish scientists who have been using Bob Dylan song titles and lyrics in their papers for years.