Vesiculation pathways in clathrin-mediated endocytosis.

Endocytosis is a fundamental cellular process for cells to communicate with their environment and recycle their membrane components. How clathrin molecules remodel the membrane remains debated more than 30 years after the discovery of clathrin. Whether curvature generation happens at the early stage of clathrin assembly or at the late stage is at the center of the debate. We constructed a physical model which allowed us to calculate an optimum pathway that is actually a combination of these two extreme hypotheses, and is closer to the late stage hypothesis than to the early stage hypothesis. Our results also suggest future experiments that can distinguish between the different hypotheses.