23 Further, this result supports the premise that the endocytic hot spots observed in hepatocytes are indeed selective for specific cargo, even discriminating between receptor/ligand complexes that share significant homology.

In this study we expressed GFP-tagged Dyn2 in a cultured hepatocyte cell line to better understand the mechanisms supporting the endocytic process. We discovered two distinct populations of dynamin-associated structures along the basal AZD6244 PM: small, static foci that appear to represent conventional clathrin-coated pits, and large (2-10 μm), Dyn2-positive structures that we have termed “hot spots.” Because both of these clathrin-based systems occupy the basal membrane domain, optical microscopy methods needed to be used exclusively in this study. hot spots were found in both transfected and untransfected cells, are associated with clathrin and the adaptor protein AP2 but not AP1, and are functional click here endocytic structures that internalize Tf and fluid markers. Most strikingly, we found that hot spots are tubulovesicular invaginations of the basal PM that generate massive numbers of endocytic vesicles that translocate to the cell interior. Importantly, hot spots appear to be selective for clathrin-based

internalization processes because we observed a striking sequestration of the TfR1 to these structures compared with the TfR2. Although both receptors internalize the Tf ligand, the TfR1 is well known to utilize clathrin-coated pits during endocytosis, MCE whereas TfR2 uptake appears to be clathrin-independent and may utilize caveolae.21, 24 This finding, and the fact that we do not find caveolin proteins localized to the hot spots (data not shown), suggests that these structures are clathrin-based, are prevalent in most cells examined, and responsive to the nutritional conditions of their surroundings as serum starvation can increase the number of cells with hot spots by 4 to 5-fold (Fig. 2E,F). It is important to note that as hot

spots are ephemeral structures, lasting only 15 to 60 minutes, a “snapshot” of fixed cells would identify only a portion of the cells forming these structures. Indeed, monitoring hot spot formation in cells over 3-4 hours in normal serum reveals that over 50% of cells form and consume hot spots, making these structure more prevalent than first thought. The incorporation of Dyn2-GFP within discrete clathrin-coated pits and large hot spots along the basal membrane of cultured cells was surprising in that we had assumed these structures would be distributed evenly along both the dorsal and ventral PM. It should be noted that most epithelial cells in situ, such as ductular kidney cells or hepatocytes, undergo substantial endocytic activity along the basolateral membrane, which is in intimate proximity to the nutrient-rich blood space or sinusoid.