Abstract
Seven years ago, Rothman and co-workers reported that the pairing of SNARE molecules constitutes a minimal machinery for the fusion of two membranes (1), providing support for the earlier formulated SNARE hypothesis. Their conclusion was drawn from experiments in vitro in which the plasma membrane protein complex syntaxin1A/SNAP25 as t-SNARE and the synaptic vesicle membrane protein vamp2 as v-SNARE were reconstituted into lipid vesicles. Although this assay clearly demonstrated that t- and v-SNAREs were sufficient to fuse liposomes, the kinetics of the reaction were disturbingly slow. The half-time of fusion was on the order of 10 min, i.e., >105 times slower than Ca2+-triggered synaptic vesicle fusion in neurons (2).
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