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Send to friendDecember 14, 2011 -- Drs. Yui Jin, a postdoctoral associate, and Lois Weisman, LSI faculty member and professor of Cell and Developmental Biology in UM’s Medical School, discovered new aspects of vesicle transport processes in cells. Vesicle transport is essential in all cell types and defects in this process are associated with disease states such as diabetes and neurodegeneration. Vesicle transport requires four steps: vesicle formation, movement, tethering to the membrane and fusion. The Weisman lab explores these processes and others by characterizing molecular mechanics in the model system Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker’s yeast) with a special focus on the role of molecular motor proteins. The molecules that were analyzed in their yeast studies, are highly similar to the molecules found in people.
In her most recent paper published in the December 13, 2011 issue of the journal Developmental Cell, Jin, Weisman and their collaborators from UC Berkeley, U Mass. Worcester and Trinity College, Ireland show an unexpected, direct interaction between the molecular motor Myosin V (Myo 2 in yeast) and the exocyst complex, an assembly of proteins which is essential for the localization, tethering and fusion of vesicles with membranes. In an earlier study Jin and Weisman showed that this motor is present much earlier in the transport process than previously understood. In this study they show that the motor remains to the very final step in fusion.
