Clathrin Heavy Chain (D3C6) XP^® Rabbit mAb #4796

Clathrin-coated vesicles provide for the intracellular transport of cargo proteins following endocytosis and during multiple vesicle trafficking pathways. Vesicles form at specialized areas of the cell membrane where clathrin and associated proteins form clathrin-coated pits. Invagination of these cell membrane-associated pits internalizes proteins and forms an intracellular clathrin-coated vesicle (1,2). Clathrin is the most abundant protein in these vesicles and is present as a basic assembly unit called a triskelion. Each clathrin triskelion is composed of three clathrin heavy chains and three clathrin light chains. Clathrin heavy chain proteins are composed of several functional domains, including a carboxy-terminal region that permits interaction with other heavy chain proteins within a triskelion, and a globular amino-terminal region that associates with other vesicle proteins (2). Adaptor proteins, such as AP2, epsin and EPS15, are responsible for the recruitment of vesicle proteins to sites of pit formation and the assembly of the clathrin-coated vesicle. Following vesicle invagination, the GTPase dynamin constricts the neck of the nascent vesicle to complete formation of the free, cytosolic vesicle (3,4).