FIGURE 5: Hypothetical pathway of Bax relocation. In wild-type cells, Bax would transit through the ER before reaching the OMM through ERMES-stabilized contacts. The deletion of MDM34 would destabilize the contacts and decrease the rate of transfer to OMM, thus inducing an increase of the accumulation in the ER. We speculate that the complete loss of contacts through the deletion of other ERMES components would fully impair Bax mitochondrial relocation.