Stepping outside the comfort zone of membrane contact site research.

Abstract

The past decade has seen striking progress in our understanding of communication between organelles via close appositions of their membranes, known as contact sites. Recent systematic studies highlight that the cellular contact site landscape is much more intricate than previously anticipated and that most, if not all, organelles are capable of establishing such contacts with one another. Hence, the big challenge for this research field is to now step outside the comfort zone of the few highly studied examples of contact sites and a handful of molecules that are transferred at these sites, and to investigate the diversity of organelle contacts and the plethora of their cellular roles.