Researchers from the Mechanobiology Institute, Singapore (MBI) at the National University of Singapore, report that endocytosis, which was previously thought to be a random process, actually occurs in a coordinated manner through collective dynamics. The work, led by Assistant Professor Wu Min, showed how a major endocytic pathway mediated by the protein clathrin, was found to commence with periodic traveling waves of clathrin, which were coupled temporally and spatially to downstream cortical actin waves. Clathrin endocytic waves were identified here as the upstream initiator of cortical actin waves. This work was published in Developmental Cell on 20 November 2017.