Wilson, B. J. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2020

Intracellular nanovesicles mediate integrin trafficking during cell migration

Membrane traffic is an important regulator of cell migration through the endocytosis and recycling of cell surface receptors such as integrin heterodimers. Intracellular nanovesicles (INVs), are a recently identified class of transport vesicle that are involved in multiple membrane trafficking steps including the recycling pathway. The only known marker for INVs is Tumor Protein D54 (TPD54/TPD52L2), a member of the TPD52-like protein family. Overexpression of TPD52-like family proteins in cancer has been linked to poor prognosis and an aggressive metastatic phenotype which suggests cell migration may be altered under these conditions. Here we show that TPD54 associates with INVs by directly binding high curvature membrane via a conserved positively charged motif in its C-terminus. We describe how other members of the TPD52-like family are also associated with INVs and we document the Rab GTPase complement of all INVs. Depletion of TPD52-like proteins inhibits cell migration and invasion; and we show that this is likely due to altered integrin recycling. Our study highlights the involvement of INVs in the trafficking of cell surface proteins to generate biologically important outputs in health and disease.

cell biology↗

bioRxiv2019

Multiple memories can be simultaneously reactivated during sleep as effectively as a single memory

Memory consolidation involves the reactivation of memory traces during sleep. If many memories are reactivated each night, how much do they interfere with one another? To explore this question, we examined whether reactivating multiple memories incurs a cost to sleep-related benefits by contrasting reactivation of multiple memories versus single memories during sleep. First, participants learned the on-screen location of different images. Each image was part of a semantically interconnected group (e.g., images of different cats). Groups were comprised of either one, two, or six images. During sleep, group-related sounds (e.g., "meow") were unobtrusively presented to reactivate memories for half of the groups. The benefit in location recall for cued versus non-cued items was independent of the number of items in the group, suggesting that reactivation occurs in a simultaneous, promiscuous manner. Intriguingly, sleep spindles and delta-theta power modulations were sensitive to group size and reflected the extent of previous learning. Our results demonstrate that multiple memories may be consolidated in parallel without compromising each memorys sleep-related benefit, suggesting that the brains capacity for reactivation is not strictly limited by separate resources needed for individual memories. These findings highlight alternative models for parallel consolidation that should be considered in future studies.

neuroscience↗