A question for virologists and vectorologists:

If you thought that an enveloped virion was directly fusing with plasma membrane, independent of protein-protein interaction, how would you seek to demonstrate that?

I think my envelope protein likely has no significant affinity for host receptor proteins, and that a depolarization of the host cell membrane is triggering the viral fusogen, affording entry into the cell.

My work can proceed without directly demonstrating this or investigating it as a hypothesis, but doing so would be very, very cool. I’m not sure if this is even a testable hypothesis, however.

I have a preference for microscopy (folks in my field sometimes seem skeptical of anything that depends on solely non-photographic evidence), but I’m really not certain how to capture something that small and fleeting, especially for an event that I’m assuming is relatively rare. To be honest though, I’d take anything.

Yall have any ideas?