Gaudin (page 601) used a liposome assay to determine the sensitivity of rabies virus–induced membrane fusion to lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) and oleic acid. The effects of these lipids on the rabies virus–induced fusion pathway are similar to their effects in other fusion systems, supporting the idea that all biological membrane fusion events proceed by the same pathway.
Although extensive work on influenza virus–induced membrane fusion and theoretical models of the energetics of lipid structures have led to the proposal that membrane fusion proceeds by a universal pathway, this theory has only been tested in a small number of systems. In the new work, the author focused on rabies virus–induced membrane fusion, which differs from influenza virus–induced fusion in several respects. The response of the rabies virus fusion event to LPCs with alphatic side chains of varying length, and to oleic...
