We study the formation of coated vesicles, which transport cargo molecules between intracellular compartments. We have artificially reconstituted the reaction, in which the COPII protein coat deforms a membrane, using Giant Unilamellar Vesicles (GUVs) as lipid bilayers. The image shows a visualization of this process by confocal microscopy.
Image courtesy of Kirsten Bacia, Randy Schekman and Berkeley Molecular Imaging Center (MIC)