Polarized Exocytosis
- 1Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6018
- 2Key Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine of Ministry of Education and Department of Developmental & Regenerative Biology, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, P.R. China
- Correspondence: guowei{at}sas.upenn.edu
Abstract
Polarized exocytosis is generally considered as the multistep vesicular trafficking process in which membrane-bounded carriers are transported from the Golgi or endosomal compartments to specific sites of the plasma membrane. Polarized exocytosis in cells is achieved through the coordinated actions of membrane trafficking machinery and cytoskeleton orchestrated by signaling molecules such as the Rho family of small GTPases. Elucidating the molecular mechanisms of polarized exocytosis is essential to our understanding of a wide range of pathophysiological processes from neuronal development to tumor invasion.
