Abstract
This overview summarizes the data for how epithelial cells sort and deliver proteins and lipids to the apical and basolateral cell surface domains. The basolateral pathway uses a Rab-SNARE mechanism for docking and fusion, while the apical route employs a different machinery. This latter mechanism is based on lipid microdomains, composed of clusters of sphingolipids and cholesterol, which function as rafts for apical delivery. The sphingolipid-cholesterol raft mechanism seems to be employed generally by mammalian cells to transport raft-associated proteins to their post-Golgi destinations.
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Verkade, P., Simons, K. Lipid microdomains and membrane trafficking in mammalian cells. Histochemistry 108, 211–220 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/s004180050161
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s004180050161