Coated vesicle adaptors

Scottie is a cell biologist who is interested in membrane traffic: how proteins find their way to the right part of the cell. Her lab works on adaptors, components of vesicle coats that determine which proteins are packaged as cargo in the vesicles, for transport to a different subcellular compartment, and which proteins remain behind. Adaptors are frequently hijacked by pathogens, and used either to invade the cell or to change the protein composition of the plasma membrane. There are also several examples of mutations in adaptors giving rise to genetic disorders.