ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2001
A quantitative model for membrane fusion based on low-energy intermediates.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2001. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 141 papers.
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Who cites it
141 citing papers in PubMed, 328 citations in OpenAlex.
- Influence of molecular shape and hydrogen bonding on glycolipid self-assembly into thermotropic gyroid phases.Chemical science · 2026Article
- The Interplay of Lipids and Peptides in Membrane Merger.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Cavity-Filling Mutations as a Strategy to Stabilize Prefusion Viral Fusion Proteins for Vaccine Design.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2026Review
- Quantifying the Activation Barrier for Phospholipid Monolayer Fusion Governing Lipid Droplet Coalescence.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Cell surface crowding is a tunable energetic barrier to cell-cell fusion.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Viral glycoprotein-mediated entry and antibody-mediated immunity in HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 infection.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Review
- Boosting Lipofection Efficiency Through Enhanced Membrane Fusion Mechanisms.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Cell fusion dynamics: mechanisms of multinucleation in osteoclasts and macrophages.Inflammation and regeneration · 2024Review
- Local Stress in Cylindrically Curved Lipid Membrane: Insights into Local Versus Global Lateral Fluidity Models.Biomolecules · 2024Article
- Homeocurvature adaptation of phospholipids to pressure in deep-sea invertebrates.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Mechanisms of SNARE proteins in membrane fusion.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2024Review
- The local variation of the Gaussian modulus enables different pathways for fluid lipid vesicle fusion.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- SARS-CoV-2 fusion peptide sculpting of a membrane with insertion of charged and polar groups.Structure (London, England : 1993) · 2023Article
- High curvature promotes fusion of lipid membranes: Predictions from continuum elastic theory.Biophysical journal · 2023Article
- Membrane-Binding Biomolecules Influence the Rate of Vesicle Exchange between Bacteria.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- Measuring single-virus fusion kinetics using an assay for nucleic acid exposure.Biophysical journal · 2022Article
- Determination of Elastic Parameters of Lipid Membranes with Molecular Dynamics: A Review of Approaches and Theoretical Aspects.Membranes · 2022Review
- The beginning and the end of SNARE-induced membrane fusion.FEBS open bio · 2022Review
- Article
- Computational Insights into the Role of Cholesterol in Inverted Hexagonal Phase Stabilization and Endosomal Drug Release.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2022Article
81 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The energetics of a fusion pathway is considered, starting from the contact site where two apposed membranes each locally protrude (as "nipples") toward each other. The equilibrium distance between the tips of the two nipples is determined by a balance of physical forces: repulsion caused by hydration and attraction generated by fusion proteins. The energy to create the initial stalk, caused by bending of cis monolayer leaflets, is much less when the stalk forms between nipples rather than parallel flat membranes. The stalk cannot, however, expand by bending deformations alone, because this would necessitate the creation of a hydrophobic void of prohibitively high energy. But small movements of the lipids out of the plane of their monolayers allow transformation of the stalk into a modified stalk. This intermediate, not previously considered, is a low-energy structure that can reconfigure into a fusion pore via an additional intermediate, the prepore. The lipids of this latter structure are oriented as in a fusion pore, but the bilayer is locally compressed. All membrane rearrangements occur in a discrete local region without creation of an extended hemifusion diaphragm. Importantly, all steps of the proposed pathway are energetically feasible.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.