Mechanistic insights relevant to protein secretion in yeast

During the past year, a powerful combination of genetic and biochemical approaches has yielded fascinating information with respect to the question of how proteins cross membranes and subsequently traffic between intracellular compartments of the yeast secretory pathway. Fundamental advances have been made in two specific areas. These include experiments that have provided new perspectives with respect to the nature of the soluble machinery involved in facilitating protein traffic from the cytoplasm to the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum, and work that has provided a biochemical description of what may in effect represent a membranous ligand-gated channel that is required for protein translocation into the endoplasmic reticulum lumen.