An MBoC Favorite: ARF is required for maintenance of yeast Golgi and endosome structure and function

In celebration of MBoC's first 20 years, members of the Editorial Board, members of the ASCB Council, and others comment on their favorite MBoC papers from the past two decades.

This paper was not only ahead of its time when first published, but is still in this category today. The logic and the simple rules governing membrane trafficking in eukaryotic cells have yet to be fully elucidated.This study is one of the first and most comprehensive demonstrations that ARF proteins, in particular Arf1, have a crucial function in this fundamental process (Gaynor et al., 1998). It provides a full picture, from kinetic analysis of multiple cargoes traveling through secretory and endosomal systems, to fluorescence visualization of multiple markers, to electron microscopy revealing membrane structures at high resolution. Despite enormous progress in the intervening years, there are still many unanswered questions regarding Arf function, and there are clues still to be found in this paper.