COP-coated vesicles in intracellular protein transport.

COP-coated vesicles have originally been implicated in vesicular transport between subcompartments of the Golgi complex in mammals in a cis to trans direction. More recently, a role for COP-coated vesicles in transport between the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi in mammalian cells has been proposed. Under certain conditions COP-coats have been localized to special domains of the transitional ER and to the cis side of the Golgi complex. This led to the assumption that COP-coated vesicles are involved in export of proteins from the ER. In addition, new findings point to a function of COP-coated vesicles in back transport of proteins from the Golgi to the ER. At present it is not known whether COP-coated vesicles move only in one or in both directions between ER and Golgi.