Nature Research, Nature Cell Biology, 6(24), p. 885-895, 2022
DOI: 10.1038/s41556-022-00912-0
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AbstractIntracellular organelles change their size during trafficking and maturation. This requires the transport of ions and water across their membranes. Macropinocytosis, a ubiquitous form of endocytosis of particular importance for immune and cancer cells, generates large vacuoles that can be followed optically. Shrinkage of macrophage macropinosomes depends on TPC-mediated Na+efflux and Cl−exit through unknown channels. Relieving osmotic pressure facilitates vesicle budding, positioning osmotic shrinkage upstream of vesicular sorting and trafficking. Here we identify the missing macrophage Cl−channel as the proton-activated Cl−channel ASOR/TMEM206. ASOR activation requires Na+-mediated depolarization and luminal acidification by redundant transporters including H+-ATPases and CLC 2Cl−/H+exchangers. As corroborated by mathematical modelling, feedback loops requiring the steep voltage and pH dependencies of ASOR and CLCs render vacuole resolution resilient towards transporter copy numbers.TMEM206disruption increased albumin-dependent survival of cancer cells. Our work suggests a function for the voltage and pH dependence of ASOR and CLCs, provides a comprehensive model for ion-transport-dependent vacuole maturation and reveals biological roles of ASOR.