Fig. 5.

Fusion mediated by sequence α vs. T₂₄α. (A) Comparison of the expected docking conformations of vesicles presenting either nonlinker sequences (blue DNA only) and poly T (T_n, shown for n = 24) linker sequences (blue and red DNA). Although the single-stranded linker DNA (red) is drawn as a helix, it is likely to be mostly unstructured; two hybrids are shown purpose of illustration only. Representative kinetic traces for (B) lipid and (C) content mixing collected when two populations of vesicles presenting on average 50 copies of DNA were mixed at equal amounts to a concentration of 2.8 nM in vesicles. Color-coding of the traces is illustrated. Blue: both vesicle populations present only nonlinker sequences 5′-α/3′-α′; Red: both vesicle populations present an average of 50 DNA each (100 total) of nonlinker and linker sequences 5′-α + 5′-T₂₄α/3′-α′ + 3′-T₂₄α′; Green: one vesicle population presents nonlinker sequence 5′-α, and the other presents linker sequence 3′-T₂₄α′; Magenta: both vesicle populations present linker sequences 5′-T₂₄α/ 3′-T₂₄α′; Yellow: vesicles present no DNA (negative control).