IntroductionIn the eukaryotic cell, the secretory proteins are transported to the cell surface through the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi apparatus. During the transport process, most of the secretory proteins are modified by oligosaccharides. The initial transfer of carbohydrate to the polypeptide from dolichol-sugar intermediates occurs in the ER and further addition and modification of oligosaccharides occurs mainly in the Golgi. The Golgi glycosylation is conducted by a variety of glycosyltransferases and the donor substrate is nucleotidesugar. The nucleotide-sugar is synthesized in the cytoplasm and incorporated in the Golgi lumenal space by a specific nucleotide-sugar transporter (NST).In the Golgi of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the glycosylation occurs solely by mannose and GDP-mannose is the essential substrate of various mannosyltransferases. Several Golgi mannosyltransferases have been identified. Och1p is the crucial α-1,6-mannosyltransferase, which initiates the elongation of outer mannosyl chain of the N-oligosaccharide core (Nakanishi-Shindo et al., 1993). Two hetero-oligomeric complexes that contain Mnn9p as a common subunit, Mnn9p-Van1p and Mnn9p-Anp1p-Hoc1p-Mnn10p-Mnn11p [named MTase I and II by Jungmann et al. (Jungmann et al., 1999) or the V and A complexes by Kojima et al. (Kojima et al., 1999), respectively], transfer either α-1,6-or α-1,2-mannose to the acceptor N-glycosyl groups (Jungmann and Munro, 1998). The latter complex might also participate in elongation of Omannosyl groups (Kojima et al., 1999). Mnt1p, Mnn2p and Mnn3p function as α-1,2-mannosyltransferase (Hausler and Robbins, 1992; Rayner and Munro, 1998). The elongation of α-1,6-mannose outer chain with α-1,2-mannose branches is terminated by the addition of α-1,3-mannose by α-1,3-mannosyltransferases Mnt2p, Mnt3p, Mnt4p and Mnn1p (Romero et al., 1999;Yip et al., 1994). All these mannosyltransferases are type-II membrane proteins and their catalytic domains localize in the Golgi lumen. The GDPmannose transporter (GMT) moves GDP-mannose into the Golgi lumen from the cytosol and moves GMP out. GMT is a member of the NST family (Berninsone and Hirschberg, 2000), which has similar multiple transmembrane domains (TMD) and functions as an antiporter of nucleotide-diphosphate-sugar and nucleotide-monophosphate in the organelle membrane (Abeijon et al., 1996;Eckhardt et al., 1996;Goto et al., 2001;Ma et al., 1997;Miura et al., 1996;Poster and Dean, 1996;Tabuchi et al., 1997).The mannosyltransferases and GMT localize to the Golgi apparatus for precise glycosylation but the mechanism is still not clear. Two models have been proposed for stable localization of membrane protein -the 'kin recognition' model (Nilsson et al., 1994;Nilsson et al., 1993) and the 'lipid bilayer' model (Bretscher and Munro, 1993;Munro, 1995). The kin recognition model proposes that the resident proteins form a large hetero-oligomer by protein-protein interaction in the organelle membrane and are consequently prevented from entering the budding vesicles destine...