Coat protein (COP)-coated vesicles have been shown to mediate protein transport through early steps of the secretory pathway in yeast and mammalian cells. Here, we attempt to elucidate their role in vesicular trafficking of plant cells, using a combined biochemical and ultrastructural approach. Immunogold labeling of cryosections revealed that COPI proteins are localized to microvesicles surrounding or budding from the Golgi apparatus. COPI-coated buds primarily reside on the cis -face of the Golgi stack. In addition, COPI and Arf1p show predominant labeling of the cis -Golgi stack, gradually diminishing toward the trans -Golgi stack. In vitro COPI-coated vesicle induction experiments demonstrated that Arf1p as well as coatomer could be recruited from cauliflower cytosol onto mixed endoplasmic reticulum (ER)/ Golgi membranes. Binding of Arf1p and coatomer is inhibited by brefeldin A, underlining the specificity of the recruitment mechanism. In vitro vesicle budding was confirmed by identification of COPI-coated vesicles through immunogold negative staining in a fraction purified from isopycnic sucrose gradient centrifugation. Similar in vitro induction experiments with tobacco ER/Golgi membranes prepared from transgenic plants overproducing barley ␣ -amylase-HDEL yielded a COPI-coated vesicle fraction that contained ␣ -amylase as well as calreticulin.
INTRODUCTIONProtein trafficking in the secretory and endocytotic pathways is facilitated by coated vesicles (Rothman and Wieland, 1996;Robinson et al., 1998). Research on mammalian and yeast cells has established that two different types of non-clathrin-coated vesicles are responsible for transport events occurring between the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and the Golgi apparatus and for intra-Golgi transport. Whereas investigators generally agree that COPIIcoated vesicles bud from the ER and transport proteins in the anterograde direction (Barlowe et al., 1994;Bannykh and Balch, 1998), the function of COPI-coated vesicles remains controversial. Strong evidence suggests that COPIcoated vesicles are responsible for the recycling of escaped ER-resident proteins from post-ER compartments (Letourneur et al., 1994), but data have also been presented supporting a role in anterograde transport of proteins, especially within the Golgi stack (Orci et al., 1997;Lippincott-Schwartz et al., 1998).The formation of both types of COP-coated vesicles involves the recruitment of a coat protein complex (coatomer for COPI-coated vesicles, Sec23/24 and Sec13/31 dimers for COPII-coated vesicles) by a membrane-associated GTP binding protein (Arf1p and Sar1p for COPI and COPII, respectively; Schekman and Orci, 1996). Both Arf1p and Sar1p exist in the cytosol as GDP-bound forms and become converted to the GTP form through the action of a membrane-associated exchange factor, guanine nucleotide exchange factor (Helms and Rothman, 1992). For Sar1p, this is Sec12p, a transmembrane protein of the ER ; for Arf1p, the most likely candidates are Gea1/2p and ARNO (ARF nucleotide binding site opener; ...