Abstract
While it is getting a consensus of plant scientists that the endocytic pathway plays very important roles in various plant functions of higher order, the knowledge on the molecular mechanism of endocytosis in plant cells is still very limited. We are attempting to resolve this question by revealing molecular functions of SNAREs with a special interest in the plant-unique machineries. One of such machineries is an R-SNARE, VAMP727, whose homologs are conserved only in seed plants. VAMP727 is characterized by an insertion of 20 amino acids in its longin domain. We have revealed that VAMP727 forms a SANRE complex with VAM3, VTI11, and SYP51 on a subpopulation of PVCs closely associated with vacuolar membrane (Ebine et al., 2008). In this meeting, we will report our recent results on the regulatory mechanism of VAMP727 complex formation.
