{"doi":"10.7554/elife.67578","title":"Sec17/Sec18 can support membrane fusion without help from completion of SNARE zippering","abstract":"Membrane fusion requires R-, Qa-, Qb-, and Qc-family SNAREs that zipper into RQaQbQc coiled coils, driven by the sequestration of apolar amino acids. Zippering has been thought to provide all the force driving fusion. Sec17/αSNAP can form an oligomeric assembly with SNAREs with the Sec17 C-terminus bound to Sec18/NSF, the central region bound to SNAREs, and a crucial apolar loop near the N-terminus poised to insert into membranes. We now report that Sec17 and Sec18 can drive robust fusion without requiring zippering completion. Zippering-driven fusion is blocked by deleting the C-terminal quarter of any Q-SNARE domain or by replacing the apolar amino acids of the Qa-SNARE that face the center of the 4-SNARE coiled coils with polar residues. These blocks, singly or combined, are bypassed by Sec17 and Sec18, and SNARE-dependent fusion is restored without help from completing zippering.","journal":"eLife","year":2021,"id":164545,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":38,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9442,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":399896,"name":"Thomas Torng","orcid":"0000-0003-2295-2777","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":353604,"name":"Amy Orr","orcid":"0000-0002-0266-0390","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":57565,"name":"Axel T. Brünger","orcid":"0000-0001-5121-2036","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":353607,"name":"William Wickner","orcid":"0000-0001-8431-0468","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":353603,"name":"Hongki Song","orcid":"0000-0002-3761-5434","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":71,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:45:32.226038Z","pmid":"33944780","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}