Protein machines and lipid assemblies: current views of cell membrane fusion.
Protein machines and lipid bilayers both play central roles in cell membrane fusion, a process crucial to life. Recent results provide clues to how both components function in fusion. Recent observations suggest a common mechanism by which very different fusion machines (from lipid-enveloped viruses and synaptic vesicles) may function to produce compartment-joining pores. This mechanism presumes that fusion proteins act as machines that use stored conformational energy to assemble closely juxtaposed lipid bilayers, bend these to form fusion-competent structures, stabilize unfavorable lipid structures and destabilize a committed intermediate to drive fusion pore formation.
Lentz
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BR
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, CB#7260, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7260, USA. uncbrl@med.unc.edu
Malinin
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V
Haque
M E
ME
Evans
K
K
D008051:Lipid Bilayers; D008561:Membrane Fusion; D008565:Membrane Proteins / Q000502:physiology*
D008051:Lipid Bilayers; D008565:Membrane Proteins