Forum 01/19/2006

“The Structure of COPII Coats and Cages”

Scott Stagg,Ph.D. – Department of Cell Biology Department, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA

COPII proteins, including the protein complexes Sec13/31 and  Sec23/24, are involved in transporting cargo from the ndoplasmic  reticulum to the Golgi apparatus. We recently solved the structure of  a self-assembling cage of Sec13/31 to 20 using cryoEM. Based on this  structure, we proposed positions for Sec13 and Sec31 in the cage  architecture and models for how the cages may expand to accommodate  cargo of various sizes. We will discuss these models and our current  studies on solving structures of cages assembled with both Sec13/31 and Sec23/24.