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Membrane fusion

Ready ⃛ aim ⃛ fire!

Nature volume 396, pages 514–515 (1998)Cite this article

All cells use a programme of membrane fusion and fission to assemble membranes, both internally and on their surface. Given that biological membranes are essentially two-dimensional fluids, fusion must obey certain restrictions that prevent incompatible membranes from intermixing. Without such selective contact, membrane fusion would quickly lead to the loss of compartmental boundaries.

A powerful and unifying concept, the SNARE hypothesis suggests that membrane selectivity is achieved by the interaction of unique membrane receptors. The so-called v- (for donor vesicle) and t- (for target membrane) SNAREs join, and may even catalyse the fusion of, membranes that are designed to mix1,2. But on pages 543 and 575 of this issue, Ungermann et al.3 and Peters and Mayer4 define three stages in the pathway — tethering (ready⃛), docking (⃛aim⃛) and fusion (⃛fire!) — that may challenge the standard model.

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Figure 1: Revised model for membrane fusion, based on the results of Ungermann et al3 and Peters and Mayer4.

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  1. The Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-3202, California, USA

    Randy Schekman

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  1. Randy Schekman
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Schekman, R. Ready ⃛ aim ⃛ fire!. Nature 396, 514–515 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/24986

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