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. 2003 Jul 11;100(15):8698–8703. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1432962100

Fig. 4.

Fig. 4.

Bistability of the membrane neck connecting a vesicle to cell plasma membrane: on-cell admittance measurements (31) on cultured macrophages IC-21. (A) An example of the capacitance change (ΔC) from level 2 to level 1 during fusion (Upper) or from level 1 to level 2 during fission (Lower) of vesicles to/from a small patch of IC-21 cell membrane; reversible changes of the capacitance (capacitance flicker) are seen in both traces. (B) The cartoon shows the changes of the equivalent electrical circuit of the patch during pinching off (from state 1 to state 2 in A) or fusion (from state 2 to state 1 in A) of a vesicle to a cell membrane (see also Fig. 1B). (C) The oscillations of the membrane neck conductance (Upper) during the capacitance flicker. Lower shows the oscillations of the BLM tubule conductance during the WT-to-NT transitions. The BLM was formed from the OPC/OPE/Chol mixture. (D) The cartoon illustrates the reversible changes of the neck shape that can account for the conductance oscillations.