Rapidly cycling proteins of the early secretory pathway can operate as cargo receptors. Known cargo receptors are abundant proteins, but it remains mysterious why their inactivation leads to rather limited secretion phenotypes. Studies of Surf4, the human orthologue of the yeast cargo receptor Erv29p, now reveal a novel function of cargo receptors. Surf4 was found to interact with endoplasmic reticulum-Golgi intermediate compartment (ERGIC)-53 and p24 proteins. Silencing Surf4 together with ERGIC-53 or silencing the p24 family member p25 induced an identical phenotype characterized by a reduced number of ERGIC clusters and fragmentation of the Golgi apparatus without effect on anterograde transport. Live imaging showed decreased stability of ERGIC clusters after knockdown of p25. Silencing of Surf4/ERGIC-53 or p25 resulted in partial redistribution of coat protein (COP) I but not Golgi matrix proteins to the cytosol and partial resistance of the cis-Golgi to brefeldin A. These findings imply that cargo receptors are essential for maintaining the architecture of ERGIC and Golgi by controlling COP I recruitment.
INTRODUCTIONThe secretory pathway of higher eukaryotic cells is composed of the three membrane organelles endoplasmic reticulum (ER), ER-Golgi intermediate compartment (ERGIC), and Golgi (Bonifacino and Glick, 2004;Appenzeller-Herzog and Hauri, 2006). Maintenance of these organelles requires a balance of anterograde (secretory) and retrograde vesicular traffic. Anterograde traffic from ER to ERGIC is mediated by coat protein (COP) II vesicles that form at ER exit sites (Aridor et al., 1995;Zeuschner et al., 2006) and fuse with the ERGIC that consists of a few hundred tubulovesicular membrane clusters in vicinity of ER exit sites (AppenzellerHerzog and Hauri, 2006). Transport from ERGIC to Golgi is mediated by pleomorphic vesicles (Ben-Tekaya et al., 2005) that carry COP I (Presley et al., 1997;Scales et al., 1997), although the mechanism of their formation remains unknown. Retrograde traffic mediated by COP I vesicles can occur from ERGIC or Golgi and recycles membrane proteins that possess either dilysine signals, including ERGIC-53 and KDEL-receptor, or diphenylalanine signals, such as members of the 24 protein family. This rapid COP I-dependent recycling is distinct from the slow Golgi-to-ER recycling of Golgi resident proteins that is COP I independent and can be either constitutive or induced (Storrie, 2005).Major constituents of anterograde and retrograde transport vesicles are transmembrane cargo receptors that mediate protein sorting by linking soluble cargo on the luminal side and coat assembly on the cytoplasmic side. To date, only few cargo receptors have been studied in detail. The polytopic transmembrane protein Erv29p is known to cycle between ER and Golgi in yeast and to operate as a cargo receptor (Belden and Barlowe, 2001). Erv29p is required for efficient packaging of the glycosylated ␣-factor pheromone precursor into COP II vesicles departing from the ER. Maturation of carboxypeptidase Y...