The bi-directional movement of pigment granules in frog melanophores involves the microtubule-based motors cytoplasmic dynein, which is responsible for aggregation, and kinesin II and myosin V, which are required for dispersion of pigment. It was recently shown that dynactin acts as a link between dynein and kinesin II and melanosomes, but it is not fully understood how this is regulated and if more proteins are involved. Here, we suggest that spectrin, which is known to be associated with Golgi vesicles as well as synaptic vesicles in a number of cells, is of importance for melanosome movements in Xenopus laevis melanophores. Large amounts of spectrin were found on melanosomes isolated from both aggregated and dispersed melanophores. Spectrin and two components of the oligomeric dynactin complex, p150(glued) and Arp1/centractin, co-localized with melanosomes during aggregation and dispersion, and the proteins were found to interact as determined by co-immunoprecipitation. Spectrin has been suggested as an important link between cargoes and motor proteins in other cell types, and our new data indicate that spectrin has a role in the specialized melanosome transport processes in frog melanophores, in addition to a more general vesicle transport.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0749.2004.00150.x | DOI Listing |
Sci Rep
January 2025
Department of Genetics and Biotechnology, Graduate School of Biotechnology, College of Life Sciences, Kyung Hee University, Yongin, Korea.
Melanosome transport is regulated by major proteins, including Rab27a, Melanophilin (Mlph), and Myosin Va (Myo-Va), that form a tripartite complex. Mutation of these proteins causes melanosome aggregation around the nucleus. Among these proteins, Mlph is a linker between Rab27a and Myo-Va.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Cell Sci
January 2025
Laboratory of Membrane Trafficking Mechanisms, Department of Integrative Life Sciences, Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Aobayama, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8578, Japan.
Various N-terminal tags have often been used to identify the functions and localization of Rab small GTPases, but their impact on Rab proteins themselves has been poorly investigated. Here, we used a knockout (KO)-rescue approach to systematically evaluate the effect of N-terminal tagging of two Rabs, Rab10 and Rab27A, on Rab10-KO HeLa cells and Rab27A-deficient melanocytes (melan-ash cells), respectively. The results showed that all of the N-terminal-tagged Rab27A proteins mediated actin-based melanosome transport in the melan-ash cells, but none of the N-terminal-tagged Rab10 proteins fully rescued the defect in tubular endosome formation in the Rab10-KO cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile it has been appreciated for decades that lysosomes can import cysteine, its for organismal physiology is unclear. Recently, the MFSD12 transmembrane protein was shown to be necessary to import cysteine into lysosomes (and melanosomes), enabling the study of these processes using genetic tools. Here, we find that mice lacking die between embryonic days 10.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCureus
December 2024
Department of Pathology, Ranga Raya Medical College, Kakinada, IND.
Chediak-Higashi syndrome (CHS) is a rare multisystem genetic disorder of childhood, caused by a defect in vesicular trafficking, which is an essential process for intracellular transport. This defect results in the formation of giant cytoplasmic granules in various cell types, including white blood cells, melanosomes, and Schwann cells. The presence of giant lysosomal granules in neutrophils and their precursors is a distinct and diagnostic feature of CHS, differentiating it from other childhood immunodeficiency disorders, such as Griscelli syndrome and Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome, which share common characteristics like albinism and increased susceptibility to fatal hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCell Calcium
January 2025
Fels Cancer Institute for Personalized Medicine, Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 19140, USA; Department of Cancer & Cellular Biology, Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 19140, USA. Electronic address:
Recent findings by Abrahamian et al. (2024) provides new insights into the relationship between Two Pore Channel 2 (TPC2) activity and the development and progression of melanoma. Melanocyte inducing transcription factor (MITF) is a critical regulator of both melanocyte and melanoma behavior.
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