Conserved Functions of Membrane Active GTPases in Coated Vesicle Formation

Abstract

Coats, COPS, and GTPases Within cells, vesicles coated with specific proteins, such as clathrin and adaptor complexes, concentrate and package cargo molecules to mediate transport between compartments. Pucadyil and Schmid (p. 1217 ) review the role of membrane-active GTPases in coated vesicle formation and propose that, although structurally diverse, the Arf-family GTPases and dynamin may play mechanistically similar roles in quality control of cargo packaging and coated-vesicle maturation—and also as components of the machinery that mediates vesicle release into a cellular compartment.