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Comment
. 2016 Jan;23(1):5-6.
doi: 10.1038/nsmb.3157.

The mystery of the fusion pore

Satyan Sharma  1 , Manfred Lindau  1   2
Affiliations
Comment

The mystery of the fusion pore

Satyan Sharma et al. Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2016 Jan.
No abstract available

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
A lipidic fusion pore (center) might fit a 12 nm nanodiscs (top) but not a 6 nm nanodisc (bottom). Nanodiscs were simulated using GROMACS 4.6 using Martini force field . The structure of ∼12nm MSP1E2 was modeled based on crystal structure 1AV1 of the lipid binding domain of ApoA-I. To generate the smaller 6 nm disc helix 4 to helix 6 were deleted using Modeler. The lipids were chosen based on the synaptic vesicle lipid composition (12 nm disc: 154 CHOL, 13 PPCS, 69 POPC, 89 POPE and 25 POPS; 6 nm disc: 50 CHOL, 5 DPSM (sphingomyelin), 23 POPC, 30 POPE, 9 POPS). Lipid numbers were chosen based on simulation results showing that MSP1E2 nanodisc contains ∼125 DMPC lipids/leaflet . DMPC has an area per lipid (APL) of 0.61 nm2. Considering the average APL of 0.44 nm2 for the multicomponent planar bilayer, total number is ∼173 lipids/leaflet. The appropriate lipids from a pre-equilibrated asymmetric bilayer were placed in the empty nanodisc. A short equilibration (50 ns) was carried out with the head groups restrained along Z-direction (normal to bilayer) followed by an unrestrained 500 ns simulation.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
(A) Possible arrangement of a 12 nm nanodisc docked to a membrane via 4 SNARE complexes after 20 ns simulation time. (B) Fusion pore snapshot after 1.665 μs simulation time with the isodensity surface of waters in the pore in side view. Colors: Syb2 – blue, Stx1 – red, SNAP-25 – green, MSP - yellow.
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References

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