Background
For fusion to take place, it has to overcome huge repulsive forces due to the strong hydration repulsion between hydrophilic lipid head groups. However, it has been hard to exactly determine the connection between adhesion, fusion and interbilayer forces. The forces that promote cell adhesion are not the same as the ones that promote membrane fusion. Studies show that by creating a stress on the interacting bilayers, fusion can be achieved without disrupting the interbilayer interactions. It has also been suggested that membrane fusion takes place through a sequence of structural rearrangements that help to overcome the barrier that prevents fusion. Thus, interbilayer fusion takes place through
- local approach of membrane
- structural rearrangements causing hydration repulsion forces to be overcome
- complete merging to form a single entity
Read more about this topic: Interbilayer Forces In Membrane Fusion
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)