A new paper means a new paper explainer. This post is all about our new paper on clathrin assembly. Some background info Endocytosis is the way that cells take up material from the outside world. The cell can make tiny vesicles that bud inwards from the cell surface and pinch off to travel inside the cell. This process is important for lots of things that cells do, so there is a lot of interest in how endocytosis works.

Clathrin is a three-legged protein complex or triskelion that can assemble into lattice-like structures. Inside the cell, this assembly helps to create vesicles: tiny packages of membranes containing proteins and goodies for the cell to use. Incredibly our first view of assembled clathrin was made in the 1960s, with resolution improving steadily since then. The image below shows these improvements.

We have a new paper out! I am a bit late with this post, since the accepted version went online in December 2020, and the final version appeared a few weeks ago. It will shortly appear in a finished issue of the journal so I can tell myself that I am not too late yet. What’s it about? A complex of TACC3-chTOG-clathrin-GTSE1 is important for stabilising the mitotic spindle during cell division.

This post has been in my drafts folder for a while. With the World Cup here, it’s time to post it! It’s a rule that a 3D assembly of hexagons must have at least twelve pentagons in order to be a closed polyhedral shape. This post takes a look at why this is true. First, some examples from nature. The stinkhorn fungus Clathrus ruber , has a largely hexagonal layout, with pentagons inserted.

This post is about a paper that was recently published. It was the result of a nice collaboration between me and Francisco López-Murcia and Artur Llobet in Barcelona. The paper in a nutshell The availability of clathrin sets a limit for presynaptic function Background Clathrin is a three legged protein that forms a cage around membranes during endoctosis.