PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Manu Goyal
AU  - Xiyan Zhao
AU  - Mariya Bozhinova
AU  - Karla Lisette Andrade López
AU  - Cilia de Heus
AU  - Sandra Schulze-Dramac
AU  - Michaela Müller-McNicoll
AU  - Judith Klumperman
AU  - Julien Béthune
TI  - A paralog-specific role of the COPI pathway in the neuronal differentiation of murine pluripotent cells
AID  - 10.1101/2020.01.27.921924
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.01.27.921924
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/01/28/2020.01.27.921924.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/01/28/2020.01.27.921924.full
AB  - Coat protein complex I (COPI)-coated vesicles mediate membrane trafficking between Golgi cisternae as well as retrieval of proteins from the Golgi to the endoplasmic reticulum. There are several flavors of the COPI coat defined by paralogous subunits of the protein complex coatomer. However, whether paralogous COPI proteins have specific functions is currently unknown. Here we show that the paralogous coatomer subunits γ1-COP and γ2-COP are differentially expressed during the neuronal differentiation of mouse pluripotent cells. Moreover, through a combination of genome editing experiments, we demonstrate that whereas γ-COP paralogs are largely functionally redundant, γ1-COP specifically promotes neurite outgrowth. Our work stresses a role of the COPI pathway in neuronal polarization and provides evidence for distinct functions for coatomer paralogous subunits in this process.