We previously demonstrated, using fluorescence recovery after photobleaching, that clathrin in clathrin-coated pits at the plasma membrane exchanges with free clathrin in the cytosol, suggesting that clathrin-coated pits are dynamic structures. We now investigated whether clathrin at the trans-Golgi network as well as the clathrin adaptors AP2 and AP1 in clathrin-coated pits at the plasma membrane and trans-Golgi network, respectively, also exchange with free proteins in the cytosol. We found that when the budding of clathrin-coated vesicle is blocked without significantly affecting the structure of clathrin-coated pits, both clathrin and AP2 at the plasma membrane and clathrin and AP1 at thetrans-Golgi network exchange rapidly with free proteins in the cytosol. In contrast, when budding of clathrin-coated vesicles was blocked at the plasma membrane or trans-Golgi network by hypertonic sucrose or K+ depletion, conditions that markedly affect the structure of clathrin-coated pits, clathrin exchange was blocked but AP2 at the plasma membrane and both AP1 and the GGA1 adaptor at the trans-Golgi network continue to rapidly exchange. We conclude that clathrin-coated pits are dynamic structures with rapid exchange of both clathrin and adaptors and that adaptors are able to exchange independently of clathrin when clathrin exchange is blocked.
100 Gbps connection to the Large Hadron Collider Open Network Exchange (LHCONE), a virtual private network of the LHC Community for example the German collaborator DE-KIT
