The most enigmatic structure in all of cell biology: The Vault. Almost 40y since its discovery, we still don't know what it does. All we know is its in every cell in our body, incredibly conserved throughout evolution, is it is massive, 3 times the mass of ribosomes.

We have some evidence that it may be involved in immune function or drug resistant or nuclear transport. But mice lacking vault genes are normal. Cancer cells lacking vault genes are not more sensitive to chemotherapy. So why is it so conserved? Why do our cells spend so much energy in making thousands of these structures if they are virtually dispensable. Very curious!