How this small peptide induces membrane fusion is not understood yet.
We show that mitochondrial inner membrane fusion is tuned by the level of oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS), whereas outer membrane fusion is insensitive.
Membrane fusion is an essential step when enveloped viruses enter cells.
The productive fusion pore in membrane fusion is generally thought to be toroidally shaped.
Intracellular membrane fusion is mediated in most cases by membrane-bridging complexes of soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptors (SNAREs).
The delivery process, termed membrane fusion, is fundamental for physiology and medicine, as pathology in this process can cause metabolic, neuropsychiatric and other diseases.
Membrane fusion is a crucial step in the delivery of the viral genome into the cell resulting in infection.
Within retinal photoreceptor rod cells membrane fusion is a component step of at least three essential cellular processes.
In a paper recently published in ACS Central Science, the researchers showed that a key step on the way to viruses infecting cells, called membrane fusion, is significantly more complicated in Zika compared to other related viruses.
Membrane fusion is defined as the consolidation of two membrane bilayers and a subsequent mixing of the two previously separated aqueous compartments.
First, Zika's membrane fusion is less sensitive to acidity than other viruses, so that Zika virus membrane fusion occurs at a higher pH — that is, a lower acidity — compared to other related viruses and that membrane fusion's efficiency increased with acidity.
