Publication Date:
2004-08-07
Description:
Vesicle fusion involves vesicle tethering, docking, and membrane merger. We show that mitofusin, an integral mitochondrial membrane protein, is required on adjacent mitochondria to mediate fusion, which indicates that mitofusin complexes act in trans (that is, between adjacent mitochondria). A heptad repeat region (HR2) mediates mitofusin oligomerization by assembling a dimeric, antiparallel coiled coil. The transmembrane segments are located at opposite ends of the 95 angstrom coiled coil and provide a mechanism for organelle tethering. Consistent with this proposal, truncated mitofusin, in an HR2-dependent manner, causes mitochondria to become apposed with a uniform gap. Our results suggest that HR2 functions as a mitochondrial tether before fusion.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Koshiba, Takumi -- Detmer, Scott A -- Kaiser, Jens T -- Chen, Hsiuchen -- McCaffery, J Michael -- Chan, David C -- R01 GM62967/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- S10 RR019409-01/RR/NCRR NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Aug 6;305(5685):858-62.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, 1200 East California Boulevard, MC114-96, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15297672" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Amino Acid Sequence
;
Amino Acid Substitution
;
Animals
;
Cell Line
;
Crystallography, X-Ray
;
Dimerization
;
GTP Phosphohydrolases/*chemistry/*metabolism
;
Humans
;
Hybrid Cells
;
Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions
;
Intracellular Membranes/physiology/ultrastructure
;
Membrane Fusion
;
Mice
;
Mitochondria/*metabolism/ultrastructure
;
Models, Molecular
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Mutation
;
Protein Structure, Secondary
;
Protein Structure, Tertiary
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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