We’re over the moon to see our latest work with Stéphane Vassilopoulos and his team published in Science. Check out how we reveal the unique architecture of clathrin-coated pits and endocytosis at the axon initial segment!

Don’t have access? Just email Christophe who will be happy to send you the pdf.

What did we discover? When we started using super-resolution microscopy and platinum-replica electron microscopy (PREM) to reveal the ultrastructure of the periodic actin-spectrin scaffold along proximal axons, we were surprised to see many clathrin-coated pits along the plasma membrane of the AIS on PREM images. Clathrin-coated pits form at the center of unique circular area of the periodic actin-spectrin scaffold that expose the bare plasma membrane: we named these exclusion area “clearings”, like in a forest.