Intracellular nanovesicles: here, there and everywhere

Transport of proteins and lipids from one membrane compartment to another is via intracellular vesicular carriers. Several classes of carrier have been described based on morphology, location and function. For example, clathrin-coated vesicles (50-100 nm diameter) formed at the plasma membrane or trans-Gogi network (TGN), COPII-coated vesicles (60-70 nm) originating at the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and intra-Golgi transport vesicles (70-90 nm). In this seminar, I will describe a newly discovered class of vesicle inside human cells. Intracellular nanovesicles (INVs) are small (30-40 nm) uncoated vesicles that transport cargo between many different cellular compartments. I will talk about i) the discovery of INVs, ii) how we think they move and iii) outline some of the flavours of INV that we know about so far.

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