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Building endocytic pits without clathrin

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Abstract

How endocytic pits are built in clathrin- and caveolin-independent endocytosis still remains poorly understood. Recent insight suggests that different forms of clathrin-independent endocytosis might involve the actin-driven focusing of membrane constituents, the lectin–glycosphingolipid-dependent construction of endocytic nanoenvironments, and Bin–Amphiphysin–Rvs (BAR) domain proteins serving as scaffolding modules. We discuss the need for different types of internalization processes in the context of diverse cellular functions, the existence of clathrin-independent mechanisms of cargo recruitment and membrane bending from a biological and physical perspective, and finally propose a generic scheme for the formation of clathrin-independent endocytic pits.

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Figure 1: Mechanisms for physically bending membranes.
Figure 2: Clustering of membrane components as a consequence of active organization of short actin filaments.
Figure 3: Lectin-driven mechanisms for building endocytic pits.
Figure 4: The formation of a generic clathrin-independent endocytic pit.

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  • 17 April 2015

    A note was added to page 9 of this Opinion to highlight a relevant study that was published while the proofs of this article were being finalized.

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Acknowledgements

The help of J. Ménétrey is acknowledged for the overlay in Figure 3b. L.J. is funded by grants from the European Community's Framework Programme under grant agreement numbers TRANSPOL-264399 and H2020-MSCA-ITN-2014, Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR-11 BSV2 014 03, ANR-14-CE14-0002-02 and ANR-14-CE16-0004-03), Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) grant RGP0029-2014, European Research Council advanced grant (project 340485) and INCa programme PLBIO11-022-IDF-JOHANNES. R.G.P. is funded by grants and fellowships from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia, and grants from the Australian Research Council. S.M. is supported by a JC Bose fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology and grants from HFSP RGP0027/2012 and a Centre of Excellence (CoE) grant from the Department of Biotechnology, Goverment of India. P.B. is funded by a European Research Concil advanced grant (project 339847) and by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-11 BSV2 014 03, ANR-14-CE09-0003-03). The Johannes and Bassereau teams are members of Labex CelTisPhyBio (11-LBX-0038) and Idex Paris Sciences et Lettres (ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL). The facilities as well as scientific and technical assistance from staff in the PICT-IBiSA/Nikon Imaging Centre at Institut Curie-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the France-BioImaging intrastructure (ANR-10-INSB-04) are acknowledged.

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Correspondence to Ludger Johannes, Robert G. Parton, Patricia Bassereau or Satyajit Mayor.

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Overview of endocytic processes (PDF 118 kb)

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Johannes, L., Parton, R., Bassereau, P. et al. Building endocytic pits without clathrin. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 16, 311–321 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm3968

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