Lipid rafts and membrane traffic

Hanzal-Bayer, Michael F.; Hancock, John F.

doi:10.1016/j.febslet.2007.03.019

« Previous Next »FEBS Letters
Volume 581, Issue 11 , Pages 2098-2104, 22 May 2007

Lipid rafts and membrane traffic

Edited by Thomas Söllner

Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia

Received 24 January 2007; received in revised form 26 February 2007; accepted 7 March 2007. published online 15 March 2007.

Abstract

Membrane rafts are regions of increased lipid acyl chain order that differ in their lipid and protein composition from the surrounding membrane. By providing an additional level of compartmentalization they have been proposed to serve many functions in cellular signal transduction and trafficking. We will review their potential involvement in different forms of membrane traffic, explicitly excluding signalling, and discuss select aspects of the raft hypothesis in its current form.

Abbreviations: DRM, detergent resistant membranes, EGF, epidermal growth factor, FRET, fluorescence resonance energy transfer, GFP, green fluorescent protein, GPI-AP, glycosylphosphatidyl-inositol anchored protein, GUV, giant unilamellar vesicles, HIV, human immunodeficiency virus, ld, liquid-disordered, lo, liquid-ordered, PH, pleckstrin homology, PIP₂, phosphatidyl-inositol-4,5-bisphosphate, TMD, transmembrane domain