Armadillo motifs involved in vesicular transport.

Abstract

Armadillo (ARM) repeat proteins function in various cellular processes including vesicular transport and membrane tethering. They contain an imperfect repeating sequence motif that forms a conserved three-dimensional structure. Recently, structural and functional insight into tethering mediated by the ARM-repeat protein p115 has been provided. Here we describe the p115 ARM-motifs for reasons of clarity and nomenclature and show that both sequence and structure are highly conserved among ARM-repeat proteins. We argue that there is no need to invoke repeat types other than ARM repeats for a proper description of the structure of the p115 globular head region. Additionally, we propose to define a new subfamily of ARM-like proteins and show lack of evidence that the ARM motifs found in p115 are present in other long coiled-coil tethering factors of the golgin family.