A bundling of viral fusion mechanisms

摘要

Membrane fusion is a fundamental process in neurotrans-mission, vesicle trafficking, and infection by enveloped viruses. Mutational studies of class I viral fusion proteins have shown that simply pulling the two membranes together is not sufficient (1-3) to catalyze fusion in a physiological context: in these systems, a specific activity of the membrane-inserted peptides is required for full fusion. The precise mechanism of membrane activity has remained elusive. Although a number of hypotheses have been put forward (4), definitively establishing which combination of these contribute to fusion has been challenging.