large pleiomorphic carriers
There are two main classes of traffic intermediates that operate in intracellular trafficking pathways: small round vesicles (SRVs), and large pleiomorphic carriers (LPCs).
While both are essential, the large pleiomorphic carriers (LPCs) appear to be responsible for moving the bulk of the secretory traffic between distant compartments.
LPCs are much larger and more variable in shape than vesicles, and they have evident interconnected tubular and saccular/cisternal components.
LPCs appear to form by en bloc extrusion and cleavage of large membrane areas of the donor organelle.
References
Luini A, Ragnini-Wilson A, Polishchuck RS, De Matteis MA. Large pleiomorphic traffic intermediates in the secretory pathway. Curr Opin Cell Biol. 2005 Aug;17(4):353-61. PMID: #15993575#
Robinson MS. Adaptable adaptors for coated vesicles. Trends Cell Biol. 2004 Apr;14(4):167-74. PMID: #15066634#