Skip to main content
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 2019 Oct 7;116(42):21328–21329. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1915891116

Correction for Manca et al., SNARE machinery is optimized for ultrafast fusion

PMCID: PMC6800370  PMID: 31591249

BIOPHYSICS AND COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY Correction for “SNARE machinery is optimized for ultrafast fusion,” by Fabio Manca, Frederic Pincet, Lev Truskinovsky, James E. Rothman, Lionel Foret, and Matthieu Caruel, which was first published January 30, 2019; 10.1073/pnas.1820394116 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 116, 2435–2442).

The authors wish to note the following: “The results published in this article were obtained with a set of parameters slightly different from the one indicated in Table 1. This led to an incorrect Fig. 2 AC. There was also a typo in the value of parameter κn, which was supposed to be 1.5 pN nm–1 in Table 1. The corrections made do not affect in any way our estimate of the time to pass the fusion barrier (τ2), and only slightly modify the N dependence of τ1. Hence, the main conclusion of our paper, the existence of an optimal number of SNAREpins between 3 and 6 units, which guarantee submillisecond fusion times, remains unaltered.

Table 1.

Physical parameters adopted in the model and references

Parameter Symbol Value Units Source
Zipping distance a 7 nm Ref. 1
Energy bias e0 28 kBT Ref. 1
Fully zipped stiffness κc 12 pN nm−1 SI Appendix
Half-zipped stiffness κn 1.5 pN nm−1 SI Appendix
Maximum zippering rate k 1 MHz Ref. 1
Drag coefficient η 3.8 × 10−7 N s m−1
FB position yf 2 nm Refs. 2 and 3
FB width σf 0.3 nm Refs. 4 and 5
FB height ef 26 kBT Refs. 6 and 7

FB, fusion barrier. 1 kBT ≈ 4 zJ.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

Main results. (A and B) Typical stochastic trajectories of the intermembranes distance y(t) (A) and the number Nc(t) of SNAREpins in state c (B) obtained from the numerical simulations. The insets in A and B show magnification of the trajectories in the time interval (43 μs, 45 μs). (C) Average of the waiting times τ1 (black), τ2 (blue), and τfusion = τ1 + τ2 (red) obtained from the numerical simulations (symbols) and our effective chemical model (lines). The numerical values corresponding to τfusion obtained in ref. 8 are represented by the red dashed line. (D) Effective free energy landscape Φ showing the three stages of fusion and the associated transition rates. Parameters are listed in Table 1.

The proposed analytic approximations are still able to accurately reproduce the exponential dependence of the timescales τ1 and τ2 on the number of SNAREpins N; see Eqs. 5 and 6 in this article. However, with the updated set of parameters, the analytical estimate for the prefactor in Eq. 6 is underestimated.” The corrected Fig. 2, legend for Fig. 2, and Table 1 appear below.

1. Y. Gao et al., Single reconstituted neuronal SNARE complexes zipper in three distinct stages. Science 337, 1340–1343 (2012).

2. R. P. Rand, V. A. Parsegian VA, Hydration forces between phospholipid bilayers. Biochim. Biophys. Acta. Rev. Biomembr. 988, 351–376 (1989).

3. E. Evans, Entropy-driven tension in vesicle membranes and unbinding of adherent vesicles. Langmuir. 7, 1900–1908 (1991).

4. D. Leckband, I. Jacob, Intermolecular forces in biology. Q. Rev. Biophys. 34, 105–267 (2001).

5. S. H. Donaldson, C. T. Lee, B. F. Chmelka, J. N. Israelachvili, General hydrophobic interaction potential for surfactant/lipid bilayers from direct force measurements between light-modulated bilayers. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 15699–15704 (2011).

6. R. Ryham, T. S. Klotz, L. Yao, F. S. Cohen, Calculating transition energy barriers and characterizing activation states for steps of fusion. Biophys. J. 110, 1110–1124 (2016).

7. C. François-Martin, J. E. Rothman, F. Pincet, Low energy cost for optimal speed and control of membrane fusion. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 114, 1238–1241 (2017).

8. F. Manca et al., SNARE machinery is optimized for ultrafast fusion. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 116, 2435–2442 (2019).


Articles from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America are provided here courtesy of National Academy of Sciences

RESOURCES