Accelerating SNARE-Mediated Membrane Fusion by DNA-Lipid Tethers

SNARE proteins are the core machinery to drive fusion of a vesicle with its target membrane. Inspired by the tethering proteins that bridge the membranes and thus prepare SNAREs for docking and fusion, we developed a lipid-conjugated ssDNA mimic that is capable of regulating SNARE function, in situ. The DNA-lipid tethers consist of a 21 base pairs binding segment at the membrane distal end that can bridge two liposomes via specific base-pair hybridization. A linker at the membrane proximal end is used to control the separation distance between the liposomes. In the presence of these artificial tethers, SNARE-mediated lipid mixing is significantly accelerated, and the maximum fusion rate is obtained with the linker shorter than 40 nucleotides. As a programmable tool orthogonal to any native proteins, the DNA-lipid tethers can be further applied to regulate other biological processes where capturing and bridging of two membranes are the prerequisites for the subsequent protein function.