Unscrambling exit site patterns on the endoplasmic reticulum as a quenched demixing process.

ABSTRACT: The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is a vital organelle in mammalian cells with a complex morphology. Consisting of sheet-like cisternae in the cell center, the peripheral ER forms a vast tubular network on which a dispersed pattern of a few hundred specialized domains (ER exit sites (ERESs)) is maintained. Molecular details of cargo sorting and vesicle formation at individual ERESs, fueling the early secretory pathway, have been studied in some detail. The emergence of spatially extended ERES patterns, however, has remained poorly understood. Here, we show that these patterns are determined by the underlying ER morphology, suggesting ERESs to emerge from a demixing process that is quenched by the ER network topology. In particular, we observed fewer but larger ERESs when transforming the ER n

SUBMITTER: Speckner K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8390867 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature