Ultrastructural aspects of membrane fusion

✍ Scribed by Satir, Birgit

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 1974
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 585 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0091-7419
• DOI: 10.1002/jss.400020503

✦ Synopsis

The secretory process represents both a well-known, important biological phenomenon and a problem that has been studied extensively for many years in a diversity of eukaryotic cell systems ranging from protozoa with their discharge of mucocysts and trichocysts (1, 2) to mammalian systems such as synaptic vesicle release (3), pancreatic zymogen release (4), release of neurosecretory material (5), and acrosome formation (6).

Common to all to these systems is the fact that the packing, transport, and storage of the secretory product(s) takes place within membrane-bound vesicles that originate from the endoplasmic reticulum of the respective cells. During maturation the secretory vesicles move from the interior of the cell towards the plasma membrane, where, upon appropriate stimulus, fusion of vesicular and plasma membranes takes place and the secretory product(s) are released. These results were mainly obtained from excellent electron microscopic studies and represented a large portion of our total knowledge of the secretory process until recently.