In the Pits

Cells don’t always have everything they need in-house. So, they receive deliveries including metabolites, hormones and proteins from elsewhere. This cargo is taken up via a process called clathrin-mediated endocytosis. Pits coated in the structural protein clathrin form on the surface of a cell’s membrane to collect the required goods and then pinch off into sacs. Here, researchers investigate the 'machinery' underpinning this operation, focusing on the protein CCDC32, which interacts with the clathrin coating and is mutated in the congenital disease cardio-facio-neuro-developmental syndrome. Using a type of electron microscopy (PREM) that 'unroofs' the clathrin-coated structures, they showed that in cells with reduced amounts of CCDC32 (pictured, right), there were fewer dome- (green) and spherical-shaped (orange) pits and more flat, clathrin-coated structures (blue) compared to normal cells (left). They also revealed the disease-causing mutant of CCDC32 prevents endocytosis in cells grown in a dish, so confirming a key role for CCDC32 in this cellular uptake process.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image from work by Ziyan Yang and colleagues
• NHC Key Laboratory of Birth Defect Research and Prevention,Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, China; Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, San Francisco, CA, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife (reviewed preprint), August 2025