Vacuole contact sites

A long time ago, we thought that all organelles live their life without touching each other….well, this view has entirely changed. It seems that every organelle contacts one or many others, yet the function is largely unknown.

The above picture is an example of something unexpected – contact site between vacuoles and mitochondria caused by overexpression of the HOPS protein Vps39 (Hönscher et al., 2014; Gonzalez Montoro et al., 2018). These vCLAMP structures and many other contacts involved in lipid transport are a focus of Ayelén Gonzalez Montoro’s group.

We rather study contact sites between vacuoles and endosomes or autophagosomes. Many of these sites will result eventually in membrane fusion of these organelles with the vacuole of these structures with the vacuole. We like to understand, how they are regulated to remain stable for a while, which proteins are modified, how their modification changes their function and which kinases (or other regulatory enzymes) detect these signals. Much of this occurs in the context of other projects (see endosomal maturation, autophagosome maturation projects). But you never know, where we get here….