Rube Goldberg

• American journalist, cartoonist and inventor

• Known for a cartoon series depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect convoluted ways

• (A) Soup spoon raised to mouth, (B) pulls a string, which (C) jerks a ladle that (D) throws a cracker past a parrot who (E) jumps for the cracker and (F) tilts his perch upsetting seeds that (G) drop into a pail whose added weight (H) pulls a cord (I) opening and (J) lighting an automatic lighter (K) setting off a skyrocket causing a sickle to cut a string (L) causing a pendulum to swing back and forth (N) thereby wiping the chin with the attached napkin

Membrane Fusion(A Review Paper)

Judith M. White

Vocabulary

• Mediated:• Fusion Protein:• Peptide:• Transmembrane:• Intracellular:• Membrane trafficking:• Fusion Pore:

Abstract

Common themes are emerging from the study of viral, cell-cell, intracellular, and liposome fusion. Viral and cellular membrane fusion events are mediated by fusion proteins or fusion machines. Viral fusion proteins share important characteristics, notably a fusion peptide within a transmembrane-anchored polypeptide chain. At least one protein involved in a cell-cell fusion reaction resembles viral fusion proteins. Components of intracellular fusion machines are utilized in multiple membrane trafficking events and are conserved through evolution. Fusion pores develop during viral and intracellular fusion events suggesting similar mechanisms for many, if not all, fusion events.