A prize for membrane magic

Abstract

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to James Rothman, Randy Schekman, and Thomas Südhof "for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells". I present a personal view of the membrane trafficking field, highlighting the contributions of these three Nobel laureates in a historical context.

Figure 1. Milestones from the Path to the Prize

(A) Accumulation of secretory vesicles in mutant cells at the permissive (top) or nonpermissive temperature (bottom) (from Novick et al., 1980). (B) Purified COP-I vesicles that mediate intra-Golgi transport and transport from the Golgi to the ER (Malhotra, V., et al. [1989]. Cell 58, 329–336). (C) Purified COP-II vesicles that carry proteins from the ER to the Golgi (Barlowe et al., 1994). (D) A synapse from embryonic cultured hippocampal neurons showing normal synaptic vesicle morphology (Janz, R., et al. [1999]. Neuron 24, 1003–1016). A fraction of vesicles are docked at the active zone, poised for rapid release in a highly calcium dependent manner.