Golgi Feels Its Own Wound

The Golgi apparatus is essential for protein processing, sorting, and transport. Processing includes carbohydrate modifications and proteolytic cleavage, and transport can involve secretion from the cell or relocation to a specific cellular compartment. Rapid and synchronized reorientation of the Golgi in migrating cells is thought to facilitate polarized secretion, providing membrane and secreted products to the proximal plasma membrane. This function is a fundamental process in cell motility. Whether the Golgi structure and positioning is functionally required for directed secretion and polarity in cell migration responses, such as wound healing, is yet to be elucidated.

: Exciting recent analysis examined the effects of perturbed Golgi positioning without disruption of microtubular or actin cytoskeleton assembly or protein secretion, in the context of cellular polarity and directional migration in wound repair. This was achieved by Yadav et al. (2009) through depletion of Golgin-160 or GMAP210 (Golgi microtubule associated protein of 210 kDa), which resulted in fragmentation and dispersal of Golgi without altering secretion kinetics. As a consequence, the direction of secretion, cell polarization, and cell migration in response to wounding were severely impaired. Thus, in response to a scratch wound, cell polarity requires peri-centrosomal positioning of the Golgi apparatus, implying that after initiation by a polarity cue there is a dependence on the Golgi's directed secretion to maintain the polarized state that facilitates cell migration.

Golgi peri-centrosomal positioning can now be included among the growing list of cellular processes and signaling pathways that are critical for establishment of cellular polarity in response to external stimuli-a key feature of wound repair.

A complete understanding of the function of Golgi components in motility merits attractive avenues for future investigations that will ultimately bring regulators of Golgi into the clinic whereby treatment of skin-related disorders will greatly benefit.