Cell adhesion and spreading require integrins-mediated cell-extracellular matrix interaction. Integrins function through binding to extracellular matrix and subsequent clustering to initiate focal adhesion formation and actin cytoskeleton rearrangement. Lipid raft, a liquid ordered plasma membrane microdomain, has been reported to play major roles in membrane motility by regulating cell surface...

Integrin activity on cells such as T lymphocytes is tightly controlled. Here we demonstrate a key role for lipid rafts in regulating integrin function. Without stimulation integrin LFA-1 is excluded from lipid rafts, but following activation LFA-1 is mobilised to the lipid raft compartment. An LFA-1 construct from which the I domain has been deleted mimics activated integrin and is constitutive...

Whether and how cold causes changes in cell-membrane or lipid rafts remain poorly characterized. Using the NSOM/QD and confocal imaging systems, we found that cold caused microscale redistribution of lipid raft markers, GM1 for lipid and CD59 for protein, from the peripheral part of microdomains to the central part on Jurkat T cells, and that cold also induced the nanoscale size-enlargement (1/...

Spatially restricting cAMP production to discrete subcellular locations permits selective regulation of specific functional responses. But exactly where and how cAMP signaling is confined is not fully understood. Different receptors and adenylyl cyclase isoforms responsible for cAMP production are not uniformly distributed between lipid raft and non-lipid raft domains of the plasma membrane. We...

One key tenet of the raft hypothesis is that the formation of glycosphingolipid- and cholesterol-rich lipid domains can be driven solely by characteristic lipid-lipid interactions, suggesting that rafts ought to form in model membranes composed of appropriate lipids. In fact, domains with raft-like properties were found to coexist with fluid lipid regions in both planar supported lipid layers a...

Lateral assemblies of glycolipids and cholesterol, "rafts," have been implicated to play a role in cellular processes like membrane sorting, signal transduction, and cell adhesion. We studied the structure of raft domains in the plasma membrane of non-polarized cells. Overexpressed plasma membrane markers were evenly distributed in the plasma membrane. We compared the patching behavior of pairs...

Lipid raft domains have attracted much recent attention as platforms for plasma membrane signalling complexes. In particular, evidence is emerging that shows them to be key regulators of G protein coupled receptor function. The G protein coupled gamma-aminobutyric acid receptor B (GABA(B) receptor) co-isolates with lipid raft domains from rat brain cerebellum. In the present study, we show that...

Anchorage dependence of cell growth, which is mediated by multiple integrin-regulated signaling pathways, is a key defense against cancer metastasis. Detachment of cells from the extracellular matrix triggers caveolin-1-dependent internalization of lipid raft components, which mediates suppression of Rho GTPases, Erk, and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase in suspended cells. Elevation of cyclic ade...

Studies of detergent resistant membrane (DRM) rafts in mature erythrocytes have facilitated identification of proteins that regulate formation of endovacuolar structures such as the parasitophorous vacuolar membrane (PVM) induced by the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. However, analyses of raft lipids have remained elusive because detergents interfere with lipid detection. Here, we use p...