Retrograde transport of mannose-6-phosphate receptor depends on several sorting machineries as analyzed by sulfatable nanobodies

Retrograde protein transport from the cell surface and endosomes to the trans-Golgi network (TGN) is essential for membrane homeostasis in general and for the recycling of mannose-6-phosphate receptors (MPRs) for sorting of lysosomal hydrolases in particular. Several different sorting machineries have been implicated in retrieval from early or late endosomes to the TGN, mostly for the cation-independent MPR (CIMPR), mainly by analysis of steady-state localization and by interaction studies. We employed a nanobody-based sulfation tool to more directly determine transport kinetics from the plasma membrane to the TGN – the site of sulfation – for the cation-dependent MPR (CDMPR) with and without silencing of candidate machinery proteins. The clathrin adaptor AP-1 that operates bidirectionally at the TGN-to-endosome interface, which had been shown to cause reduced sulfation when rapidly depleted, produced hypersulfation of nanobodies internalized by CDMPR upon long-term silencing, reflecting accumulation in the TGN. In contrast, knockdown of retromer (Vps26), epsinR, or Rab9 reduced CDMPR arrival to the TGN. No effect was observed upon silencing of TIP47. Most surprisingly, depletion of the GGA (Golgi-localized, γ-adaptin ear-containing, Arf-binding) proteins inhibited retrograde transport rather than TGN exit. This study illustrates the usefulness of derivatized, sulfation-competent nanobodies to analyze retrograde protein transport to identify the contributions of different machineries.