16. Although you are an experimentally gifted graduate student, you are so busy

Question

16. Although you are an experimentally gifted graduate student, you are so busy doing experiments
that you have a hard time keeping up with the literature, meaning you aren’t always quite on top of
recent or even not so recent experimental findings in cell biology. You are working on the
secretory pathway and notice that a number of proteins that function in the secretory pathway
contain the sequence KDEL at their C-terminus. You have cloned the gene from one of these KDEL
containing proteins and you remove this sequence using recombinant DNA techniques. You have
the ability to reintroduce either the WT (wild-type) gene or the mutated gene lacking the KDEL
sequence, and the protein is produced.
A. Where inside the cell would you expect to visualize the WT protein?
C. What do you think would happen to the mutant protein lacking the KDEL sequence?

Explanation / Answer

A. The WT protein with KDEL sequence would be found in the ER. This signal is used to identify proteins which need to be retained in the ER. --------------------------------------- C. If the KDEL sequence is removed, the mutant protein would be found in the Golgi apparatus as all proteins without the KDEL sequence are transported to the Golgi apparatus for further modifications and secretion to specific target sites. Instead of being in the ER this mutant be be transported to some other organelle.

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