Lipid rafts at a crossroad between cell biology and physics在细胞生物学和物理学之间的交叉路口的脂筏.pdfVIP

REVIEW Lipid rafts: at a crossroad between cell biology and physics Ken Jacobson, Ole G. Mouritsen and Richard G. W. Anderson Membrane lateral heterogeneity is accepted as a requirement for the function of biological membranes and the notion of lipid rafts gives specificity to this broad concept. However, the lipid raft field is now at a technical impasse because the physical tools to study biological membranes as a liquid that is ordered in space and time are still being developed. This has lead to a disconnection between the concept of lipid rafts as derived from biochemical and biophysical assays and their existence in the cell. Here, we compare the concept of lipid rafts as it has emerged from the study of synthetic membranes with the reality of lateral heterogeneity in biological membranes. Further application of existing tools and the development of new tools are needed to understand the dynamic heterogeneity of biological membranes. 1 11 The origin of the raft hypothesis can be traced to the perplexing discov- 2006 Keystone Symposium : “Membrane rafts are small (10–200 nm), ery that glycosphingolipids cluster in the Golgi apparatus before being heterogeneous, highly dynamic, sterol- and sphingolipid-enriched sorted to the apical surface of polarized epithelial cells2. Subsequent stud- domains that compartmentalize cellular processes. Small rafts can some- ies established that glycosphingolipid clusters tend to be insoluble in times be stabilized to form larger platforms through protein–protein and Triton X-100 at 4 °C, forming detergent-resistant membranes (DRM), protein–lipid interactions.” It is our contention that the lipid-raf