A Nanodisc-Cell Fusion Assay with Single-Pore Sensitivity and Sub-millisecond Time Resolution.
Methods Mol Biol 2019;
1860:263-275. [PMID:
30317511 DOI:
10.1007/978-1-4939-8760-3_17]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/13/2023]
Abstract
During exocytosis, vesicles fuse with the plasma membrane and release their contents. The fusion pore is the initial, nanometer-sized connection between the plasma membrane and the cargo-laden vesicle. A growing body of evidence points toward the fusion pore being a regulator of exocytosis, but the shortcomings of current experimental techniques to investigate single-fusion pores make it difficult to study factors governing pore behavior. Here we describe an assay that fuses v-SNARE-reconstituted nanodiscs with cells ectopically expressing "flipped" t-SNAREs to monitor dynamics of single fusion pores in a biochemically defined system using electrical recordings. We also describe a fluorescence microscopy-based approach to monitor nanodisc-cell fusion that is much simpler to employ, but cannot resolve single pores.
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