Arabidopsis ABCG transporters, which are required for export of diverse cuticular lipids, dimerize in different combinations.

ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporters play diverse roles, including lipid transport, in all kingdoms. ABCG subfamily transporters that are encoded as half-transporters require dimerization to form a functional ABC transporter. Different dimer combinations that may transport diverse substrates have been predicted from mutant phenotypes. In Arabidopsis thaliana, mutant analyses have shown that ABCG11/WBC11 and ABCG12/CER5 are required for lipid export from the epidermis to the protective cuticle. The objective of this study was to determine whether ABCG11 and ABCG12 interact with themselves or each other using bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) and protein traffic assays in vivo. With BiFC, ABCG11/ABCG12 heterodimers and ABCG11 homodimers were detected, while ABCG12 homodimers were not. Fluorescently tagged ABCG11 or ABCG12 was localized in the stem epidermal cells of abcg11 abcg12 double mutants. ABCG11 could traffic to the plasma membrane in the absence of ABCG12, suggesting that ABCG11 is capable of forming flexible dimer partnerships. By contrast, ABCG12 was retained in the endoplasmic reticulum in the absence of ABCG11, indicating that ABCG12 is only capable of forming a dimer with ABCG11 in epidermal cells. Emerging themes in ABCG transporter biology are that some ABCG proteins are promiscuous, having multiple partnerships, while other ABCG transporters form obligate heterodimers for specialized functions.

Putting the pH into phosphatidic acid signaling.

The lipid phosphatidic acid (PA) has important roles in cell signaling and metabolic regulation in all organisms. New evidence indicates that PA also has an unprecedented role as a pH biosensor, coupling changes in pH to intracellular signaling pathways. pH sensing is a property of the phosphomonoester headgroup of PA. A number of other potent signaling lipids also contain headgroups with phosphomonoesters, implying that pH sensing by lipids may be widespread in biology.

Spatial proteomics defines the content of trafficking vesicles captured by golgin tethers.

Intracellular traffic between compartments of the secretory and endocytic pathways is mediated by vesicle-based carriers. The proteomes of carriers destined for many organelles are ill-defined because the vesicular intermediates are transient, low-abundance and difficult to purify. Here, we combine vesicle relocalisation with organelle proteomics and Bayesian analysis to define the content of different endosome-derived vesicles destined for the trans-Golgi network (TGN). The golgin coiled-coil proteins golgin-97 and GCC88, shown previously to capture endosome-derived vesicles at the TGN, were individually relocalised to mitochondria and the content of the subsequently re-routed vesicles was determined by organelle proteomics. Our findings reveal 45 integral and 51 peripheral membrane proteins re-routed by golgin-97, evidence for a distinct class of vesicles shared by golgin-97 and GCC88, and various cargoes specific to individual golgins. These results illustrate a general strategy for analysing intracellular sub-proteomes by combining acute cellular re-wiring with high-resolution spatial proteomics.

pH Biosensing by PI4P Regulates Cargo Sorting at the TGN.

Phosphoinositides, diacylglycerolpyrophosphate, ceramide-1-phosphate, and phosphatidic acid belong to a unique class of membrane signaling lipids that contain phosphomonoesters in their headgroups having pKa values in the physiological range. The phosphomonoester headgroup of phosphatidic acid enables this lipid to act as a pH biosensor as changes in its protonation state with intracellular pH regulate binding to effector proteins. Here, we demonstrate that binding of pleckstrin homology (PH) domains to phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P) in the yeast trans-Golgi network (TGN) is dependent on intracellular pH, indicating PI4P is a pH biosensor. pH biosensing by TGN PI4P in response to nutrient availability governs protein sorting at the TGN, likely by regulating sterol transfer to the TGN by Osh1, a member of the conserved oxysterol-binding protein (OSBP) family of lipid transfer proteins. Thus, pH biosensing by TGN PI4P allows for direct metabolic regulation of protein trafficking and cell growth.

Author Correction: TBC1D23 is a bridging factor for endosomal vesicle capture by golgins at the trans-Golgi.

In the version of Supplementary Table 1 originally published with this Article, in the sheet relating to Fig. 3c, all values in the 'golgin-97-mito' column were 1.3 times larger than the actual values, which was due to author error when generating the Supplementary Table. These errors did not affect the graph in Fig. 3c, which was plotted with the correct values. Supplementary Table 1 has now been replaced so that it contains the correct values.

TBC1D23 is a bridging factor for endosomal vesicle capture by golgins at the trans-Golgi.

The specificity of membrane traffic involves tethers at destination organelles that selectively capture incoming transport vesicles to allow SNAREs on opposing membranes to then assemble and drive fusion. Tethers include both protein complexes and long coiled-coil proteins, although how they contribute to specificity remains unclear. The golgin coiled-coil proteins at the Golgi apparatus capture vesicles from different origins, but the vesicle-specific molecular cues that they recognize are unknown. Vesicle tethering is typically a transient process and therefore is challenging to interrogate in vivo. Thus, we have used a system in which an ectopic golgin causes vesicles to accumulate in a tethered state. By applying proximity biotinylation to the golgin-captured vesicles, we identify TBC1D23, an apparently catalytically inactive member of a family of Rab GTPase-activating proteins (GAPs), as a vesicle-golgin adaptor that is required for endosome-to-Golgi trafficking. The Rab GAP domain of TBC1D23 binds to a conserved motif at the tip of golgin-245 and golgin-97 at the trans-Golgi, while the C terminus binds to the WASH complex on endosome-derived vesicles. Thus, TBC1D23 is a specificity determinant that links the vesicle to the target membrane during endosome-to-Golgi trafficking.

Phosphatidic acid is a pH biosensor that links membrane biogenesis to metabolism.

Recognition of lipids by proteins is important for their targeting and activation in many signaling pathways, but the mechanisms that regulate such interactions are largely unknown. Here, we found that binding of proteins to the ubiquitous signaling lipid phosphatidic acid (PA) depended on intracellular pH and the protonation state of its phosphate headgroup. In yeast, a rapid decrease in intracellular pH in response to glucose starvation regulated binding of PA to a transcription factor, Opi1, that coordinately repressed phospholipid metabolic genes. This enabled coupling of membrane biogenesis to nutrient availability.