ER contact sites direct late endosome transport

Endosomes shuttle select cargoes between cellular compartments and, in doing so, maintain intracellular homeostasis and enable interactions with the extracellular space. Directionality of endosomal transport critically impinges on cargo fate, as retrograde (microtubule minus-end directed) traffic delivers vesicle contents to the lysosome for proteolysis, while the opposing anterograde (plus-end directed) movement promotes recycling and secretion. Intriguingly, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is emerging as a key player in spatiotemporal control of late endosome and lysosome transport, through the establishment of physical contacts with these organelles. Earlier studies have described how minus-end-directed motor proteins become discharged from vesicles engaged at such contact sites. Now, Raiborg et al. implicate ER-mediated interactions, induced by protrudin, in loading plus-end-directed motor kinesin-1 onto endosomes, thereby stimulating their transport toward the cell's periphery. In this review, we recast the prevailing concepts on bidirectional late endosome transport and discuss the emerging paradigm of inter-compartmental regulation from the ER-endosome interface viewpoint.