Intracellular Compartments and Protein Sorting.ppt

Intracellular Compartments and Protein Sorting Haixu Tang School of Informatics The major intracellular compartments of an animal cell Relative Volumes Occupied by the Major Intracellular Compartments An electron micrograph Development of plastids Hypothetical schemes for the evolutionary origins of some organelles Four distinct families Secretory vs. endocytic pathways Protein traffic Protein traffic Gated transport Transmembrane transport Vesicular transport membrane-enclosed transport intermediates Sorting sequences Some sorting sequences Prediction of protein sorting Psort web server: http://psort.nibb.ac.jp/ prediction of protein localization sites in cells from their primary amino acid sequence Construction of Membrane-enclosed Organelles Require Information in the Organelle Itself The information required to construct a membrane-enclosed organelle does not reside exclusively in the DNA that specifies the organelles proteins. Epigenetic information in the form of at least one distinct protein that preexists in the organelle membrane is also required, and this information is passed from parent cell to progeny cell in the form of the organelle itself. Presumably, such information is essential for the propagation of the cells compartmental organization, just as the information in DNA is essential for the propagation of the cells nucleotide and amino acid sequences. Nuclear pore complexes Nuclear Envelope Nuclear lamina Consists of intermediate filaments, 30-100 nm thick. These intermediate filaments are polymers of lamin, ranging from 60-75 kD. A-type lamins are inside, next to nucleoplasm; B-type lamins are near the nuclear membrane (inner). They may bind to integral proteins inside that membrane. The lamins may be involved in the functional organization of the nucleus.  Nuclear localization signals (NLSs) Protein import through nuclear pores Possible paths for free diffusion through the nuclear pore complex Nuclear Import / Export Recepto