Membrane Repair

A paper published in Nature Cell Biology (11, 56 - 64; 2008), MG53 nucleates assembly of cell membrane repair machinery, is authored by Chuanxi Cai, Haruko Masumiya, Noah Weisleder, Noriyuki Matsuda, Miyuki Nishi, Moonsun Hwang, Jae-Kyun Ko, Peihui Lin, Angela Thornton, Xiaoli Zhao, Zui Pan, Shinji Komazaki, Marco Brotto, Hiroshi Takeshima and Jianjie Ma. The authors note the importance of membrane repair and remodeling to the maintenance of cellular integrity and function. They focus their attention on a protein known as MG53 which belongs to a protein family named TRIM 72. MG53 is a component of the sarcolemmal membrane-repair complex and functions to enable a fusion between intracellular vesicles and sarcolemmal membranes. Impairment of the sarcolemmal membrane can result in the introduction of extracellular substances which have oxidative effects. The assembly of the membrane repair machinery may be initiated by MG53 according to the paper.