Endosomes articles from across Nature Portfolio

The matrix metalloprotease MT1-MMP drives cancer metastasis. Here, the authors demonstrate how invasive cancer cells instigate non-invasive neighbouring cells to become degradative and invasive by transferring catalytically active MT1-MMP fragments.

Newman et al. show that, upon mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) replication stress, enlarged nucleoids are trafficked to endosomes. Endosomal rupture releases mtDNA into the cytoplasm, triggering cGAS–STING activation and innate immune signalling.

Meiotic drivers of the wtf family kill progeny lacking the driver by producing a toxin and an antidote. Here, authors reveal that ubiquitination-mediated sorting of the antidote prevents it from becoming toxic and enables it to neutralize the toxin.

The study presents a high-resolution structure of the retriever complex and a model of the retriever–CCC assembly, providing a mechanistic framework for studying how retriever facilitates endosomal recycling of diverse membrane proteins.

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.

In this issue of Nature Cell Biology, Mercier et al. show that acute changes in membrane tension may be a physiological trigger for ESCRT assembly, which drives membrane scission, luminal vesicle budding, and a wide array of other membrane remodelling events throughout the cell.

Endosomes are central stations for converging proteins from biosynthetic pathways and endocytic routes. Many endosomal proteins are sorted to the plasma membrane or the Golgi despite the lysosome being the primary endosomal fate. SNX5 and SNX6 are now revealed to decode a conserved bipartite signal to mediate protein sorting to the Golgi or the plasma membrane.