Figure 3.

Dependence of the total energy (W_T) of the membrane on the process coordinates for the scenarios with formation of stalk (a); and π-shaped structure (b). The geometric parameters are as follows: the radius of fusion rosette R = 3 nm, half-width of the fusion peptide annulus R_FP = 0.1 nm, shallow insertion. In the case of stalk, the red curve corresponds to the total energy W_T, the blue curve—to the sum (W_h + W_f), i.e., the total energy less the deformation energy. For the case of π-shaped structure, only the dependence on the pore radius R_p is shown; the energy is minimized with respect to the hydrophobic belt height L for each fixed R_p.