A “hub and spoke” system enables plant cells to efficiently coordinate cellular trafficking, particularly for cellular recycling, the so-called autophagy process. Specialized vesicles, the autophagosomes, engulf harmful molecules and carry them to the vacuole, where they are degraded. During this journey, the autophagosomes mature using molecular mechanisms about which little is known in plants. Now, researchers from the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (GMI) characterize the mechanism by which autophagy uses the hub and spoke model in plant cells. The findings are published in the Journal of Cell Biology.
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