Kaksonen GroupPublications
Molecular basis for coupling the plasma membrane to the actin cytoskeleton during clathrin-mediated endocytosis.
Skruzny, M., Brach, T., Ciuffa, R., Rybina, S., Wachsmuth, M. & Kaksonen, M.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Sep 18;109(38):E2533-42. Epub 2012 Aug 27.
Dynamic actin filaments are a crucial component of clathrin-mediated endocytosis when endocytic proteins cannot supply enough energy for vesicle budding. Actin cytoskeleton is thought to provide force for membrane invagination or vesicle scission, but how this force is transmitted to the plasma membrane is not understood. Here we describe the molecular mechanism of plasma membrane-actin cytoskeleton coupling mediated by cooperative action of epsin Ent1 and the HIP1R homolog Sla2 in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Sla2 anchors Ent1 to a stable endocytic coat by an unforeseen interaction between Sla2's ANTH and Ent1's ENTH lipid-binding domains. The ANTH and ENTH domains bind each other in a ligand-dependent manner to provide critical anchoring of both proteins to the membrane. The C-terminal parts of Ent1 and Sla2 bind redundantly to actin filaments via a previously unknown phospho-regulated actin-binding domain in Ent1 and the THATCH domain in Sla2. By the synergistic binding to the membrane and redundant interaction with actin, Ent1 and Sla2 form an essential molecular linker that transmits the force generated by the actin cytoskeleton to the plasma membrane, leading to membrane invagination and vesicle budding.
PubMed
Plasma Membrane Reshaping during Endocytosis Is Revealed by Time-Resolved Electron Tomography.
Kukulski, W., Schorb, M., Kaksonen, M. & Briggs, J.A.
Cell. 2012 Aug 3;150(3):508-20.
Endocytosis, like many dynamic cellular processes, requires precise temporal and spatial orchestration of complex protein machinery to mediate membrane budding. To understand how this machinery works, we directly correlated fluorescence microscopy of key protein pairs with electron tomography. We systematically located 211 endocytic intermediates, assigned each to a specific time window in endocytosis, and reconstructed their ultrastructure in 3D. The resulting virtual ultrastructural movie defines the protein-mediated membrane shape changes during endocytosis in budding yeast. It reveals that clathrin is recruited to flat membranes and does not initiate curvature. Instead, membrane invagination begins upon actin network assembly followed by amphiphysin binding to parallel membrane segments, which promotes elongation of the invagination into a tubule. Scission occurs on average 9 s after initial bending when invaginations are approximately 100 nm deep, releasing nonspherical vesicles with 6,400 nm(2) mean surface area. Direct correlation of protein dynamics with ultrastructure provides a quantitative 4D resource.
PubMed
Precise, correlated fluorescence microscopy and electron tomography of lowicryl sections using fluorescent fiducial markers.
Kukulski, W., Schorb, M., Welsch, S., Picco, A., Kaksonen, M. & Briggs, J.A.
Methods Cell Biol. 2012;111:235-57.
The application of fluorescence and electron microscopy to the same specimen allows the study of dynamic and rare cellular events at ultrastructural detail. Here, we present a correlative microscopy approach, which combines high accuracy of correlation, high sensitivity for detecting faint fluorescent signals, as well as robustness and reproducibility to permit large dataset collections. We provide a step-by-step protocol that allows direct mapping of fluorescent protein signals into electron tomograms. A localization precision of <100 nm is achieved by using fluorescent fiducial markers which are visible both in fluorescence images and in electron tomograms. We explain the critical details of the procedure, give background information on the individual steps, present results from test experiments carried out during establishment of the method, as well as information about possible modifications to the protocol, such as its application to 2D electron micrographs. This simple, robust, and flexible method can be applied to a large variety of cellular systems, such as yeast cell pellets and mammalian cell monolayers, to answer a broad spectrum of structure-function related questions.
PubMed
Reassessment of the role of plasma membrane domains in the regulation of vesicular traffic in yeast.
Brach, T., Specht, T. & Kaksonen, M.
J Cell Sci. 2011 Feb 1;124(Pt 3):328-37. Epub 2011 Jan 11.
The Saccharomyces cerevisiae plasma membrane has been proposed to contain two stably distributed domains. One of these domains, known as MCC (membrane compartment of Can1) or eisosomes, consists of furrow-like membrane invaginations and associated proteins. The other domain, called MCP (membrane compartment of Pma1), consists of the rest of the membrane area surrounding the MCC patches. The role of this plasma membrane domain organization in endocytosis is under debate. Here we show by live-cell imaging that vesicular traffic is restricted to the MCP and the distribution of endocytic and exocytic sites within the MCP is independent of the MCC patch positions. Photobleaching experiments indicated that Can1 and Tat2, two MCC-enriched permeases, exchange quickly between the two domains. Total internal reflection fluorescence and epi-fluorescence microscopy showed that the enrichment of Can1 at the MCC persisted after addition of its substrate, whereas the enrichment of Tat2 disappeared within 90 seconds. The rates of stimulated endocytosis of Can1 as well as Tat2 were similar in both wild-type cells and pil1Delta cells, which lack the MCC. Thus, our data suggest that the enrichment of certain plasma membrane proteins in the MCC does not regulate the rate of their endocytosis.
PubMed
Correlated fluorescence and 3D electron microscopy with high sensitivity and spatial precision.
Kukulski, W., Schorb, M., Welsch, S., Picco, A., Kaksonen, M. & Briggs, J.A.
J Cell Biol. 2011 Jan 10;192(1):111-9. doi: 10.1083/jcb.201009037. Epub 2011 Jan3.
Correlative electron and fluorescence microscopy has the potential to elucidate the ultrastructural details of dynamic and rare cellular events, but has been limited by low precision and sensitivity. Here we present a method for direct mapping of signals originating from approximately 20 fluorescent protein molecules to 3D electron tomograms with a precision of less than 100 nm. We demonstrate that this method can be used to identify individual HIV particles bound to mammalian cell surfaces. We also apply the method to image microtubule end structures bound to mal3p in fission yeast, and demonstrate that growing microtubule plus-ends are flared in vivo. We localize Rvs167 to endocytic sites in budding yeast, and show that scission takes place halfway through a 10-s time period during which amphiphysins are bound to the vesicle neck. This new technique opens the door for direct correlation of fluorescence and electron microscopy to visualize cellular processes at the ultrastructural scale.
PubMed
A systematic screen for protein-lipid interactions in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Gallego, O., Betts, M.J., Gvozdenovic-Jeremic, J., Maeda, K., Matetzki, C., Aguilar-Gurrieri, C., Beltran-Alvarez, P., Bonn, S., Fernandez-Tornero, C., Jensen, L.J., Kuhn, M., Trott, J., Rybin, V., Muller, C.W., Bork, P., Kaksonen, M., Russell, R.B. & Gavin, A.C.
Mol Syst Biol. 2010 Nov 30;6:430. doi: 10.1038/msb.2010.87.
Protein-metabolite networks are central to biological systems, but are incompletely understood. Here, we report a screen to catalog protein-lipid interactions in yeast. We used arrays of 56 metabolites to measure lipid-binding fingerprints of 172 proteins, including 91 with predicted lipid-binding domains. We identified 530 protein-lipid associations, the majority of which are novel. To show the data set's biological value, we studied further several novel interactions with sphingolipids, a class of conserved bioactive lipids with an elusive mode of action. Integration of live-cell imaging suggests new cellular targets for these molecules, including several with pleckstrin homology (PH) domains. Validated interactions with Slm1, a regulator of actin polarization, show that PH domains can have unexpected lipid-binding specificities and can act as coincidence sensors for both phosphatidylinositol phosphates and phosphorylated sphingolipids.
PubMed
Taking apart the endocytic machinery.
Kaksonen, M.
J Cell Biol. 2008 Mar 24;180(6):1059-60.
The formation of clathrin-coated endocytic vesicles is driven by a complex and highly dynamic molecular machinery. In this issue, Idrissi et al. (Idrissi, F.-Z., H. Grotsch, I.M. Fernandez-Golbano, C. Presciatto-Baschong, H. Riezman, and M.-I. Geli. 2008. J. Cell Biol. 180:1219-1232) reveal some of the secrets of this machinery by analyzing the localizations of nine endocytic proteins during vesicle budding in yeast using quantitative immunoelectron microscopy.
PubMed
Endocytic vesicle scission by lipid phase boundary forces.
Liu, J., Kaksonen, M., Drubin, D.G. & Oster, G.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 Jul 5;103(27):10277-82. Epub 2006 Jun 26.
Endocytosis in budding yeast is thought to occur in several phases. First, the membrane invaginates and then elongates into a tube. A vesicle forms at the end of the tube, eventually pinching off to form a "free" vesicle. Experiments show that actin polymerization is an active participant in the endocytic process, along with a number of membrane-associated proteins. Here we investigate the possible roles of these components in driving vesiculation by constructing a quantitative model of the process beginning at the stage where the membrane invagination has elongated into a tube encased in a sheath of membrane-associated protein. This protein sheath brings about the scission step where the vesicle separates from the tube. When the protein sheath is dynamin, it is commonly assumed that scission is brought about by the constriction of the sheath. Here, we show that an alternative scenario can work as well: The protein sheath acts as a "filter" to effect a phase separation of lipid species. The resulting line tension tends to minimize the interface between the tube region and the vesicle region. Interestingly, large vesicle size can further facilitate the reduction of the interfacial diameter down to a few nanometers, small enough so that thermal fluctuations can fuse the membrane and pinch off the vesicle. To deform the membrane into the tubular vesicle shape, the membrane elastic resistance forces must be balanced by some additional forces that we show can be generated by actin polymerization and/or myosin I. These active forces are shown to be important in successful scission processes as well.
PubMed
Harnessing actin dynamics for clathrin-mediated endocytosis.
Kaksonen, M., Toret, C.P. & Drubin, D.G.
Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol. 2006 Jun;7(6):404-14.
Actin polymerization often occurs at the plasma membrane to drive the protrusion of lamellipodia and filopodia at the leading edge of migrating cells. A role for actin polymerization in another cellular process that involves the reshaping of the plasma membrane--namely endocytosis--has recently been established. Live-cell imaging studies are shedding light on the order and timing of the molecular events and mechanisms of actin function during endocytosis.
PubMed
A modular design for the clathrin- and actin-mediated endocytosis machinery.
Kaksonen, M., Toret, C.P. & Drubin, D.G.
Cell. 2005 Oct 21;123(2):305-20.
Endocytosis depends on an extensive network of interacting proteins that execute a series of distinct subprocesses. Previously, we used live-cell imaging of six budding-yeast proteins to define a pathway for association of receptors, adaptors, and actin during endocytic internalization. Here, we analyzed the effects of 61 deletion mutants on the dynamics of this pathway, revealing functions for 15 proteins, and we analyzed the dynamics of 8 of these proteins. Our studies provide evidence for four protein modules that cooperate to drive coat formation, membrane invagination, actin-meshwork assembly, and vesicle scission during clathrin/actin-mediated endocytosis. We found that clathrin facilitates the initiation of endocytic-site assembly but is not needed for membrane invagination or vesicle formation. Finally, we present evidence that the actin-meshwork assembly that drives membrane invagination is nucleated proximally to the plasma membrane, opposite to the orientation observed for previously studied actin-assembly-driven motility processes.
PubMed
A pathway for association of receptors, adaptors, and actin during endocytic internalization.
Kaksonen, M., Sun, Y. & Drubin, D.G.
Cell. 2003 Nov 14;115(4):475-87.
In budding yeast, many proteins involved in endocytic internalization, including adaptors and actin cytoskeletal proteins, are localized to cortical patches of differing protein composition. Using multicolor real-time fluorescence microscopy and particle tracking algorithms, we define an early endocytic pathway wherein an invariant sequence of changes in cortical patch protein composition correlates with changes in patch motility. Three Arp2/3 activators each showed a distinct behavior, suggesting distinct patch-related endocytic functions. Actin polymerization occurs late in the endocytic pathway and is required both for endocytic internalization and for patch disassembly. In cells lacking the highly conserved endocytic protein Sla2p, patch motility was arrested and actin comet tails associated with endocytic patch complexes. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching of the actin comet tails revealed that endocytic complexes are nucleation sites for rapid actin polymerization. Attention is now focused on the mechanisms by which the order and timing of events in this endocytic pathway are achieved.
PubMed