Research Article 1441 Filopodia are conduits for melanosome transfer to keratinocytes Glynis Scott, Sonya Leopardi, Stacey Printup and Brian C. Madden Department of Dermatology, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, NY, USA Author for correspondence (e-mail:
[email protected]) Accepted 4 January 2002 Journal of Cell Science 115, 1441-1451 (2002) © The Company of Biologists Ltd Summary Melanosomes are specialized melanin-synthesizing cultured with keratinocytes induced a highly dendritic organelles critical for photoprotection in the skin. phenotype with extensive contacts between melanocytes Melanosome transfer to keratinocytes, which involves and keratinocytes through filopodia, many of which whole organelle donation to another cell, is a unique contained melanosomes. These results suggest a unique role biological process and is poorly understood. Time-lapse for filopodia in organelle transport and, in combination digital movies and electron microscopy show that filopodia with our previous work showing the presence of SNARE from melanocyte dendrites serve as conduits for proteins and rab3a on melanosomes, suggest a novel model melanosome transfer to keratinocytes. Cdc42, a small system for melanosome transfer to keratinocytes. GTP-binding protein, is known to mediate filopodia formation. Melanosome-enriched fractions isolated from Movies available on-line human melanocytes expressed the Cdc42 effector proteins PAK1 and N-WASP by western blotting. Expression of Key words: Melanosome, Melanocyte, Cdc42, Filopodia, constitutively active Cdc42 (Cdc42V12) in melanocytes co- Keratinocyte Introduction microscopy of cultured cells, which allowed direct Melanosomes are organelles unique to melanocytes that visualization of melanosome movement and modifiers of function in the synthesis of melanin, a complex pigment actin, microtubules and their motor proteins.