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Lessons learned about how to spend your energy studying a not so Vesicular Nucleotide Transporter for ATP

While many people best know adenosine trisphosphate (ATP) as the energy currency of the cell, it is also a neurotransmitter. ATP works with other neurotransmitters in diverse peripheral and central nerves as a co-transmitter. Packing neurotransmitters into vesicles requires transporter proteins, and the Vesicular Nucleotide Transporter (VNUT), encoded by the SLC17A9 gene, is though to load ATP into vesicles. Over the past 14 years, we have studied VNUT localization in various model systems, developed diverse reporter constructs to study it’s localization, and gone down bioinformatic and molecular rabbit holes. In the end, we have come to the conclusion that VNUT is most likely not a vesicular protein, and propose a novel mechanism for vesicular loading of ATP.  Along the way, we have developed diverse DIY tools to automate microscopy research, which we will share in this overview of our lab’s work.