Fig. 3.

a Plots of fusion pore energy (E_b*) vs. fusion pore radius (R_p) for a single-contour bilayer. was obtained by minimizing Eq. 9 with R_n(s) represented as a polynomial (Eq. 12) of third order. b Shapes of curves that minimize (Eq. 9) for R_b = 3, 5 and 7 nm (R_p = 2.5 nm, C₀ = 0). The larger values of R_b led to lower values of ${\mathit{\text{E}}}_{\text{b}}^{\ast }$. The dashed curve is a catenary fitted by eye around the largest energy-minimized fusion pore. Note that the x- and z-axes have different scales in b