Next to the protein-based machineries composed of small G-proteins, coat complexes, SNAREs and tethering factors, the lipid-based machineries are emerging as important players in membrane trafficking.
Filamentous machineries composed of type IV pilins, which are associated with an amazing array of properties ranging from motility to electric conductance, are arguably the most widespread since distinctive proteins dedicated to their biogenesis are found in most known species of prokaryotes.
In this review, we will provide an overview of the complex biology of the machineries composed of type IV pilins whose biogenesis depends on a conserved set of proteins, for which we would like to introduce the unifying name type IV filaments (Tff).
The protein biosynthetic machinery, composed of ribosomes, chaperones, and localization factors, is increasingly found to interact directly with factors dedicated to protein degradation.
Work over the last decades revealed that Ca2+ binding to synaptotagmin triggers release by stimulating synaptotagmin binding to a core fusion machinery composed of SNARE and SM proteins that mediates membrane fusion during exocytosis.
The excision of introns coupled to exon ligation to form mRNA molecules is performed by the spliceosome, a huge macromolecular machinery composed of five snRNPs (U1, U2, U4/U6 and U5 snRNAs associated with proteins) and many additional splicing factors.
Are we genomicists simply dissecting the background generated around the transcription machinery, composed of a large fraction of sRNA by-products?
This process, called splicing, is carried out by the spliceosome, a complex macromolecular machinery composed of five small nuclear ribonucleoprotein particles (U1, U2, U4, U5, and U6 snRNP) and a large number of auxiliary proteins [ 3].
In the presence of galactose, Gal4, bound as homodimer to its UASGAL sites, recruits the transcriptional machinery composed of at least three protein complexes known as SAGA, TFIID, and mediator (reviewed by Traven et al., 2006).
The formation of clathrin-coated endocytic vesicles is driven by a complex molecular machinery composed of more than 50 different proteins (Doherty and McMahon, 2009; Boettner et al., 2012; Weinberg and Drubin, 2012).
Activators such as C/EBPβ and C/EBPδ promote the recruitment of general transcriptional machinery composed of general transcription factors (GTFs) and RNA Pol II to form the pre-initiation complex (PIC) (Lemon and Tjian, 2000; Thomas and Chiang, 2006).
