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. 2012 Oct 12;5(6):746–755. doi: 10.1242/dmm.010124

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© 2012. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly cited and all further distributions of the work or adaptation are subject to the same Creative Commons License terms.

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Fig. 3. — NPC1 and NPC2 mediate cholesterol export from late endosomes and/or lysosomes. Cholesterol (blue oval) is released from endocytosed LDLs and binds to NPC2 (red), a soluble protein in the lysosomal lumen.

Subsequently, NPC2 directly transfers the cholesterol to NPC1 (yellow), located in the limiting membrane of the lysosome, so that the hydrophobic cholesterol molecule does not have to travel through the aqueous milieu of the lysosomal lumen. Ultimately, the cholesterol is exported from the lysosomal membrane and is transported via the cytosol to the endoplasmic reticulum and plasma membrane by unknown mechanisms.