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How much can SNAREs flex their muscles?

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 14, pages 880–882 (2007)Cite this article

The high stability of SNARE complexes is probably crucial for their role in membrane fusion, but it has been difficult to measure. A surface-forces apparatus has now been used to measure the stabilization energy of a partially assembled SNARE complex, and the result (35 kBT) is among the highest protein-folding free energies ever observed. Moreover, this approach offers a bright future for further structural and energetic studies of membrane fusion machineries.

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Figure 1: Example of a force-versus-distance profile observed during an approach-separation cycle in one of the SFA experiments of Li et al.10.
Figure 2: Diagram summarizing the main result obtained with the SFA experiments of Li et al.10, which yielded the free energy of formation of a partially assembled neuronal SNARE complex between two planar membranes (35 kBT).

Katie Ris-Vicari

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Josep Rizo and Han Dai are in the Departments of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 6000 Harry Hines Boulevard, Dallas, Texas 75390, USA.,

    Josep Rizo & Han Dai

  2. Han Dai is currently in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, 250 Longwood Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. jose@arnie.swmed.edu,

    Han Dai

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  1. Josep Rizo
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  2. Han Dai
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Rizo, J., Dai, H. How much can SNAREs flex their muscles?. Nat Struct Mol Biol 14, 880–882 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb1007-880

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