Molecular determinants of species-specific gamete adhesion triggering HAP2-mediated membrane fusion
Jennifer F. Pinello, Andrés Ferriño-Iriarte, Hibba Hussain, Meenakshi Tanwar, Sijil Puthur Vijayan, Tingting Guo, Pierre Legrand, Sujan Manikumar, Ruhama Demissie, Félix A. Rey, William J. Snell, Eduard Baquero · 2026
Read Molecular determinants of species-specific gamete adhesion triggering HAP2-mediated membrane fusion by Jennifer F. Pinello, Andrés Ferriño-Iriarte, Hibba Hussain, Meenakshi Tanwar, Sijil Puthur Vijayan, Tingting Guo, Pierre Legrand, Sujan Manikumar, Ruhama Demissie, Félix A. Rey, William J. Snell, Eduard Baquero (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13601591.txt.
Description
Jennifer Pinello and co-authors solved the structure of the handshake between two algal sex proteins in a 2026 study. Fertilization starts when gametes stick together in a species-specific way, then fuse. In the alga Chlamydomonas, the protein MAR1 prepares the ancient fusion protein HAP2 on one gamete and receives FUS1 from the other. The team crystallized the pair and read their joint structure by X-ray.
The complex pairs up as a double unit. Mutations at the contact surface strongly impaired adhesion in living cells. Adding loose MAR1 to activated gametes grabbed their FUS1 and fully blocked the fusion trigger. The structure shows, atom by atom, how a receptor complex arms a class II fusion protein, a mechanism shared with viral entry machines.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Jennifer F. Pinello, Andrés Ferriño-Iriarte, Hibba Hussain, Meenakshi Tanwar, Sijil Puthur Vijayan, Tingting Guo, Pierre Legrand, Sujan Manikumar, Ruhama Demissie, Félix A. Rey, William J. Snell, Eduard Baquero |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 57 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |