Despite the protective membrane that separates a cell from the environment, cells need the ability to detect and respond to environmental changes. Additionally, cells often need to communicate with one another. Unicellular and multicellular organisms use a variety of cell signaling mechanisms to communicate to respond to the environment.

Contact-dependent signaling, as the name suggests, requires that communicating cells be in direct contact with each other. This is achieved either through receptor-ligand interactions or by specialized cytoplasmic channels that allow the flow of small molecules between cells. In animal cells, channels called gap junctions facilitate contact-dependent signaling in certain tissues, whereas, plasmodesmata perform a similar function in plants.
Gap Junctions
In animal cells, gap junctions are formed...

Intraluminal vesicles (ILVs) are small vesicles 50-80 nm in diameter formed during the maturation of early endosomes. A specialized endosome containing numerous ILVs is called a multivesicular body (MVB). ILVs contain internalized molecules such as antigens, nucleic acids, proteins, and metabolites. Some of these molecules are released from the MVBs inside exosomes and are transported to other cells. Other MVBs contain molecules that are retained in the ILVs and are later degraded within the...

After budding out from the ER membrane, some COPII vesicles lose their coat and fuse with one another to form larger vesicles and interconnected tubules called vesicular tubular clusters or VTCs. These clusters constitute a compartment at the ER-Golgi interface known as ERGIC (Endoplasmic Reticulum Golgi Intermediate Compartment). The ERGIC is a mobile membrane-bound cargo transport system that sorts proteins secreted from ER and delivers them to the Golgi.
With the help of motor proteins such...

Proteins and neurotransmitters in secretory vesicles can be released from a cell upon vesicle docking, priming, and fusion with the plasma membrane. Vesicles are docked and primed in preparation for the quick exocytosis of their contents in response to a stimulus. The fusion process is mainly carried out by a SNAP Receptor or SNARE complex, consisting of synaptobrevin, syntaxin-1, and SNAP-25.
In 1993, Jim Rothman proposed that the antiparallel pairing of vesicular and transmembrane SNAREs, or...