Endosomes articles from across Nature Portfolio

Autophagy decreases with age, and this is in part attributed to increasing levels of the autophagy-suppressing protein Rubicon. Cell biologists now find another ageing-associated function for Rubicon — the release of exosomes containing microRNAs that control senescence and longevity.

How cargo proteins are selected for endosomal recycling by the Commander complex is unclear. Here the authors report that the cargo adaptor SNX17 interacts with the Retriever sub-complex to facilitate cargo entry into the Commander endosomal recycling pathway and show that cargo relieves an autoinhibited conformation of SNX17 to promote SNX17-Commander coupling.

Endosomes function as sorting stations that segregate cargo proteins into endosomal carriers, enabling their distribution to subcellular target compartments. Increasingly detailed structural insights have revealed how proteins, such as sorting nexins, assemble on endosomal membranes to form a coat that facilitates the formation and detachment of tubular carriers.

Autophagy decreases with age, and this is in part attributed to increasing levels of the autophagy-suppressing protein Rubicon. Cell biologists now find another ageing-associated function for Rubicon — the release of exosomes containing microRNAs that control senescence and longevity.

The commander complex was recently shown through interactomic screens to be a ubiquitous and conserved protein complex with fundamental biological roles. Two recent reports together revealed the structure of the complete commander assembly and explored its functional implications.

Despite a growing understanding of the immunostimulatory properties of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), little is known about how and why mtDNA escapes its mitochondrial confines. A study now describes an endosomal trafficking pathway that facilitates mtDNA egress and provides an additional mechanism of mtDNA release in vitro.

The extracellular vesicle (EV) surface corona is emerging as a crucial mediator of EV functions. This Comment discusses the roles and biogenesis of the EV corona, as well as the importance of controls to determine whether a biological effect is attributable to the internal EV cargo or to the corona associated with the EV exofacial surface.

The class II phosphatidylinositol 3-kinases (PI3Ks) serve important roles in diverse cellular processes. The lab of Volker Haucke has now determined high-resolution structures of mouse PI3KC2α in both active and inactive conformations, elucidating the autoregulatory mechanism of class II PI3K activation.