New study on traffic of lysosomal transporters in yeast and human cells published in Scientific Reports

A novel paper entitled “The AP-3 adaptor complex mediates sorting of yeast and mammalian PQ-loop-family basic amino acid transporters to the vacuolar/lysosomal membrane” has just been published in the journal Scientific Reports of the Nature publishing group. This article reports converging data obtained in yeast and human cancer cells showing that a similar mechanism based on the AP-3 adaptor complex promotes sorting of basic amino acid transporters (the similar yeast Ypq and human PQLC2 proteins) from the Golgi to the lysosome/vacuole. This work has been carried out by E. Llinares (FRIA PhD student) and A. Barry (FNRS postdoc) in the general context of the study of cystinosis, a genetic disease caused by mutations in the gene encoding cystinosin, the lysosomal exporter of cystine. It was supported by the Cystinosis Research Foundation.