Mechanistic insights into cargo sorting and export from the Golgi apparatus

The Golgi apparatus has a central role in the formation and trafficking of glycoproteins and lipids. It is organized into a series of flattened, membrane-bound compartments called cisternae, each housing a unique set of resident proteins that sequentially modify newly synthesized proteins and lipids as they move through the Golgi stack. In the final compartments, known as the trans-Golgi network (TGN), the processed cargoes are sorted and packaged into transport carriers. Despite substantial progress, key questions remain about how proteins and lipids are selectively sorted within the Golgi for delivery to specific destinations. In this Review we highlight recent insights on the biogenesis of membrane carriers at the TGN that enable transport of macromolecules along the secretory pathway and discuss how dysfunction of the molecular machinery gives rise to Golgi-related diseases.