Articles of Significant Interest Selected from This Issue by the Editors

Abstract

African trypanosomes (Trypanosoma brucei) dwell in the bloodstream of infected mammalian hosts in continuous exposure to the adaptive immune response. They rely on an extremely high rate of endocytosis in order to clear antibodies bound to the cell surface. However, endocytosis occurs at only a single point on the plasma membrane—an invagination containing the base of the flagellum, termed the flagellar pocket. Coiled around the neck of the flagellar pocket on its cytoplasmic face is a fishhook-shaped cytoskeletal complex containing the protein TbMORN1. Morriswood and Schmidt (p. 1081–1093) show that depletion of TbMORN1 results in a striking phenotype in which protein access to the flagellar pocket is apparently impaired, suggesting that the complex may function as a kind of molecular valve.