Lipid Rafts and Alzheimer’s Disease: Protein-Lipid Interactions and Perturbation of Signaling

Lipid Rafts and Alzheimer’s Disease: Protein-Lipid Interactions and Perturbation of Signaling

Lipid rafts are membrane domains, more ordered than the bulk membrane and enriched in cholesterol and sphingolipids. They represent a platform for protein-lipid and protein-protein interactions and for cellular signaling events. In addition to their normal functions, including membrane trafficking, ligand binding (including viruses), axonal development and maintenance of synaptic integrity, raf...

Lipid rafts and insulin signaling.

Lipid rafts are domains within the plasma membrane that are enriched in cholesterol and lipids with saturated acyl chains. Specific proteins, including many signaling proteins, segregate into lipid rafts, and this process is important for certain signal transduction events in a variety of cell types. Within the past decade, data have emerged from many laboratories that implicate lipid rafts as ...

Lipid rafts and redox signaling.

In addition to the amplifying action of enzymes in the cell-signaling cascade, another important mechanism has been shown to amplify the signals massively when ligands bind to their receptors, which is characterized by clustering of membrane lipid microdomains or lipid rafts and formation of various signaling platforms. In this process, many receptor molecules aggregate on stimulation, thereby ...

Cholesterol, lipid rafts, and disease.

Lipid rafts in neuronal signaling and function.

Lipid rafts are plasma membrane microdomains rich in cholesterol and sphingolipids, which provide a particularly ordered lipid environment. Rafts are enriched in glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored proteins, as well as proteins involved in signal transduction and intracellular trafficking. In neurons, lipid rafts act as platforms for the signal transduction initiated by several classes ...