Remodeling the Specificity of an Endosomal CORVET Tether Underlies Formation of Regulated Secretory Vesicles in the Ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila.

ABSTRACT: In the endocytic pathway of animals, two related complexes, called CORVET (class C core vacuole/endosome transport) and HOPS (homotypic fusion and protein sorting), act as both tethers and fusion factors for early and late endosomes, respectively. Mutations in CORVET or HOPS lead to trafficking defects and contribute to human disease, including immune dysfunction. HOPS and CORVET are conserved throughout eukaryotes, but remarkably, in the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila, the HOPS-specific subunits are absent, while CORVET-specific subunits have proliferated. VPS8 (vacuolar protein sorting), a CORVET subunit, expanded to 6 paralogs in Tetrahymena. This expansion correlated with loss of HOPS within a ciliate subgroup, including the Oligohymenophorea, which contains Tetrahymena. As uncovered

SUBMITTER: Sparvoli D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5840023 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature