Fig. 5. Coating and/or linking liposomes for temporal control of SNARE-mediated membrane fusion.

Fusion kinetics are characterized by lipid mixing assays, where the v-liposome (v) contains 62% DOPC, 15% DOPE, 20% DOPS, 1.5% Rhod-PE, 1.5% NBD-PE and v-SNAREs, while the t-liposome (t) contains 65% DOPC, 15% DOPE, 20% DOPS and co-expressed t-SNAREs. a Tile-coated v-liposomes (vT) show suppressed fusion with uncoated t-liposomes (blue), which can be rescued after coat removal by TMSD (red) at 100 min. b Fusion between DNA1-tethered v-liposomes (v1) and DNA2-tethered t-liposomes (t2) can be greatly boosted by a complementary linker (linker_12) added at 100 min (red), but not by a non-complementary linker (green). No fusion occurs between ssDNA-tethered protein-free liposomes (pf1 and pf2) in the presence of the complementary linker (blue). Each curve in panel (a) shows the average of two batches of each sample; each curve in panel (b) shows the average of three batches of each sample; shading indicates the standard deviation. Estimated rounds of fusion, based on a previous calibration curve, are labeled at the end of each trace¹⁷. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.