Lipid Microdomains: Structural Correlations, Fluctuations, and Formation Mechanisms

Jun Fan, Maria Sammalkorpi, Mikko Haataja

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

30 Citations (Scopus)
2 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Compositional lipid microdomains (“lipid rafts”) in mammalian plasma membranes are believed to facilitate many important cellular processes. While several physically distinct scenarios predicting the presence of finite-sized microdomains in vivo have been proposed in the past, direct experimental verification or falsification of model predictions has remained elusive. Herein, we demonstrate that the combination of the spatial correlation and temporal fluctuation spectra of the lipid domains can be employed to unambiguously differentiate between the existing theoretical scenarios. Furthermore, the differentiation of the raft formation mechanisms using this methodology can be achieved by collecting data at physiologically relevant conditions without the need to tune control parameters.
Original languageEnglish
Article number118101
Pages (from-to)1-4
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume104
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2010
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

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