Big gulps: specialized membrane domains for rapid receptor-mediated endocytosis

Eukaryotic cells are well known to use an elaborate, clathrin-based endocytic machinery to internalize ligand–receptor complexes. Although the number of components identified as being used during this essential process has increased substantially over the past decade, an appreciation for how receptor-mediated endocytosis is organized at a broader, cellular scale is still mostly undefined. Here, some new insights into how cells cluster and organize the endocytic machinery at defined cytoplasmic domains to increase the speed and efficiency of ligand–receptor internalization are presented.