Theoretical Study of Lipid Rafts in Cell Membranes

摘要: Recent studies have revealed that a cell membrane is not the homogeneous and passive bilayer described in the “fluid mosaic model”, but a lateral heterogeneous medium with a complex nanoscale lipidic organization. The concept of lipid rafts to refer to nanometric lateral domains rich in saturated lipids and cholesterol, is assumed to be the basic organizing principle in cell membranes [1]. Such structures are estimated to be in the tens to few hundreds nanometers range, and are endowed with membrane protein sorting and signal transduction functions. Moreover, they have been recently unveiled as dynamic and scale-dependent structures; namely, their size and stability may dynamically change under specific signals or stimulus, contributing to the diversification of cellular responses [2, 3]. We present two modeling schemes to approach the raft phenomenology. In a first discrete approach [4] the plasma …