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Virology

A class act

Membrane fusion occurs in many situations in living organisms — when certain viruses enter host cells, for instance. Three crystal structures shed light on the protein rearrangements that bring about such fusion.

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Figure 1: Proposed mechanism for membrane fusion by class I fusion proteins.
Figure 2: Proposed mechanism for fusion by class II proteins, incorporating the new results1,2,3.

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Correspondence to Theodore S. Jardetzky or Robert A. Lamb.

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Jardetzky, T., Lamb, R. A class act. Nature 427, 307–308 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/427307a

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