Cell membranes. Molecular lipid therapy

Cell membranes: the lipid perspective.

Although cell membranes are packed with proteins mingling with lipids, remarkably little is known about how proteins interact with lipids to carry out their function. Novel analytical tools are revealing the astounding diversity of lipids in membranes. The issue is now to understand the cellular functions of this complexity. In this Perspective, we focus on the interface of integral transmembra...

Lipid assembly into cell membranes

A fundamental problem of cell biology and biochemistry is the elucidation of the mechanisms by which the specific components of subcellular membranes are assembled into mature organelles. The major components of all cell membranes are lipids and proteins. The presence of discrete structural motifs contained in the primary sequence of proteins directs a large number of post-translational process...

Lipid mobility and molecular binding in fluid lipid membranes.

The lateral mobility of dilute concentrations of fluorescently labeled lipids doped into supported membranes is found to change upon receptor ligand binding at the membrane surface, even when the lipid is not directly involved in the binding event. Experiments using membrane microarrays are performed that illustrate the use of lipid mobility measurements as an effectively label-free strategy of...

Elasticities and stabilities: lipid membranes vs cell membranes

A cell membrane can be simply regarded as composite material consisting of lipid bilayer, membrane cytoskeleton beneath lipid bilayer, and proteins embedded in lipid bilayer and linked with membrane cytoskeleton if one only concerns its mechanical properties. In this Chapter, above all, the authors give a brief introduction to some important work on mechanical properties of lipid bilayers follo...

Lipid Membranes