Intracellular Vesicle Fusion Requires a Membrane-Destabilizing Peptide Located at the Juxtamembrane Region of the v-SNARE

Rathore, Shailendra S.; Liu, Yinghui; Yu, Haijia; Wan, Chun; Lee, MyeongSeon; Yin, Qian; Stowell, Michael H.B.; Shen, Jingshi

Membrane fusion-the merging of two lipid bilayers into one-involves substantial membrane remodeling and lipid rearrangements, imposing a high energy barrier that must be overcome by specialized membrane fusion proteins Martens and McMahon, 2008; Südhof and Rothman, 2009 ). An extensively studied form of membrane fusion is the merging of intracellular vesicles with their target membranes, which transports cargo proteins between organelles in the endomembrane system (Baker and Hughson, 2016; Brunger et al., 2009; Ohya et al., 2009; Wickner, 2010) . Intracellular vesicle fusion is driven by two conserved families of molecules: SNAREs (soluble N-ethylmaleimide sensitive factor attachment protein receptors) and SM (Sec1/Munc18) proteins (Rizo and Südhof, 2012; Shen et al., 2007) . The vesicle-anchored v-SNARE pairs with the target membraneassociated t-SNAREs to form a four-helix trans-SNARE complex, forcing the two ensures SNARE pairing specificity (Baker et al., 2015; Ma et al., 2013; Shen et al., 2007; Yu et al., 2018) .