Abstract
Fusion between two lipid membranes is superficially easy to understand: Two lipid bilayers come into contact and meld into one seamless membrane. But even at this basic level, one must distinguish whether fusion simply means the merging of the two membranes or whether the internal contents (of the liposomes or vesicles) must also mix. Certainly, for the case of vesicles, the requirement that “true” fusion involves the mixing of the internal volumes as well as lipid mixing is a reasonable and practical way of defining fusion. There are other situations, however, where the above definition is inadequate. For instance, in modeling exocytosis, where the internal contents of a liposome is excreted outward, there is no mixing per se of two internal volumes. In this case, the essence of membrane fusion has to be defined slightly differently. Leaving aside such interesting considerations concerning the definition of fusion, there is also much unknown about the process of fusion. Certainly there are many pathways for initiating vesicle membrane fusion; a partial listing would include induction by cations (Papahadjopoulos et al., 1977), by pH (Ellens et al., 1984), by proteins (Morero et al., 1985), by temperature (Verkleij, 1980), by electric field (Zimmermann, 1982; Sowers, 1984), or even spontaneous fusion between vesicles (Suurkuusk et al., 1976; Schullery et al., 1980; Chang et al., 1982).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Berne, B. J., and Pecora, R., 1976, Dynamic Light Scattering, Wiley, New York.
Boggs, J. M., Stamp, D., Hughes, D. W., and Deber, C. M., 1981, Influence of ether linkage on the lamellar to hexagonal phase transition of ethanolamine phospholipids, Biochemistry 20:5728–5735.
Caffrey, M., 1985, Kinetics and mechanism of the lamellar gel/lamellar liquid crystal and lamellar/inverted hexagonal phase transition in phosphatidylethanolamine: A realtime X-ray diffraction study using synchrotron radiation, Biochemistry 24:4826–4844.
Callen, H. B., 1960, Thermodynamics, Wiley, New York.
Chang, E. L., and Yager, Y, 1983, Effect of high pressure on a lipid non-bilayer phase, Mol. Cryst. Liq. Cryst.98:125–129.
Chang, E. L., Gaber, B. P., and Sheridan, J. P., 1982, Photon correlation spectroscopy study on the stability of small unilamellar DPPC vesicles, Biophys. J.39:197–201.
Cullis, P. R., and DeKruijff, B., 1979, Lipid polymorphism and the functional role of lipids in biological systems, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 559:399–420.
Deutsch, J. W., and Kelly, R. B., 1981, Lipids of synaptic vesicles: Relevance to the mechanism of membrane fusion, Biochemistry 20:378–385.
Ellens, H., Bentz, J., and Szoka, F. C., 1984, pH-induced destabilization of phosphatidyl-ethanolamine-containing liposomes: Role of bilayer contact, Biochemistry 23:1532–1538.
Hochachka, P. W., and Somero, G. N., 1973, Strategies of Biochemical Adaptation, W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia.
Hope, M. J., and Cullis, P. R., 1981, The role of nonbilayer lipid structures in the fusion of human erythrocytes induced by lipid fusogens, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 640:82–90.
Hui, S. W., Stewart, T. P., Boni, L. T., and Yeagle, P. L., 1981, Membrane fusion through point defects in bilayers, Science 212:921–923.
Israelachvili, J. N., Mitchell, D. J., and Ninham, B. W., 1976, Theory of self-assembly of hydrocarbon amphiphiles into micelles and bilayers, J. Chem Soc. Faraday Trans. II 72:1525–1568.
Liu, N. I., and Kay, R. L., 1977, Redetermination of the pressure dependence of the lipid bilayer phase transition, Biochemistry 16:3484–3486.
Luzzatti, V., 1968, X-ray diffraction studies of lipid-water systems, in: Biological Membranes (D. Chapman, ed.), pp. 71–123, Academic Press, New York.
Mantsch, H. H., Martin, A., and Cameron, D. G., 1981, An infrared spectroscopic characterization of the polymorphic phase behavior of human erythrocyte phosphatidylethanolamine, Can. J. Spectrosc.26:79–84.
Morero, R. D., Vinals, A. L., Bloj, B., and Farias, R. N., 1985, Fusion of phospholipid vesicles induced by muscle glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase in the absence of calcium, Biochemistry 24:1904–1909.
Nayar, R., Hope, M. J., and Cullis, P. R., 1982, Phospholipids as adjuncts for calcium ion stimulated release of chromaffin granule contents: Implications for mechanisms of exocytosis, Biochemistry 21:4583–4589.
Papahadjopoulos, D., Vail, W. J., Newton, C., Nir, S., Jacobson, K., Poste, G., and Lazo, R., 1977, Studies on membrane fusion III. The role of calcium induced phase changes, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 465:579–598.
Provencher, S. W., 1982, A constrained regularization method for inverting data represented by linear algebraic or integral equations, Compt. Phys. Commun.27:213–227.
Provencher, S. W., 1982, Contin: A general purpose constrained regularization program for inverting noisy linear algebraic and integral equations, Compt. Phys. Commun.27:229–242.
Schullery, S. E., Schmidt, C. F., Felgner, P., Tillack, T. W., and Thompson, T. E., 1980, Fusion of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine vesicles, Biochemistry 19:3919–3923.
Siegel, D. P., 1984, Inverted micellar structures in bilayer membranes: Formation rates and half-lives, Biophys. J.45:399–420.
Sowers, A. E., 1984, Characterization of electric field-induced fusion in erythrocyte ghost membranes, J. Cell. Biol.99:1989–1996.
Suurkuusk, J., Lentz, B. R., Barenholz, Y, Biltonen, R. L., and Thompson, T. E., 1976, A calorimetric and fluorescent probe study of gel-liquid crystalline phase transition in small, single lamellar DPPC vesicles, Biochemistry 15:1393–1401.
Tilcock, C. P. S., Bally, M. B., Farren, S. B., and Cullis, P. R., 1982, Influence of cholesterol on the structural preferences of DOPE-DOPC systems: Aphosphorous-31 and deuterium NMR study, Biochemistry 21:4595–4601.
Verkleij, A J., 1984, Lipid intramembranous particles, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 779:43–63.
Verkleij, A. J., van Echteld, C. J. A., Gerritsen, W. J., Cullis, P. R., and DeKruijff, B., 1980, The lipid particle as an intermediate structure in membrane fusion processes and bilayer to hexagonal HII transitions, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 600:620–624.
Wong, P. T. T., and Mantsch, H. H., 1985, Effects of hydrostatic pressure on the molecular structure and endothermic phase transitions of phosphatidylcholine bilayers: A Raman scattering study, Biochemistry 24:4091–4096.
Yager, P., and Chang, E. L., 1983, Destabilization of a lipid non-bilayer phase by high pressure, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 731:491–494.
Zimmermann, U., 1982, Electric field-mediated fusion and related electrical phenomena, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 694:227–277.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1987 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chang, E.L. (1987). Pressure as a Probe of Vesicle Fusion. In: Sowers, A.E. (eds) Cell Fusion. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9598-1_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9598-1_16
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-9600-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-9598-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive