Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
OBSERVING THE NANOSCALE ORGANIZATION
OF MODEL BIOLOGICAL MEMBRANES BY
ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOPY
Pierre-Emmanuel Milhiet and Christian Le Grimellec
INSERM, Unité 554, Montpellier, France
Université de Montpellier, CNRS, UMR 5048,
Centre de Biochimie Structurale, Montpellier, France
pem@2cbs.cnrs.fr
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Biological membranes are essential to cell life, delineating intracellular
compartment or forming a protective barrier as plasma membranes do and
being involved in cell communication with the extracellular environment.
Lipids are the most important components (in terms of the number of
molecules), forming a thin ilm that provides the basic structure of the
membrane. Proteins are peripheral or embedded within the membrane.
Lipids are organized as a bilayer with two lealets with different compositions,
i.e. the inner lealet containing phosphatidylserine and the outer lealet
largely enriched in sphingolipids. In addition, membrane components are
very dynamic in-plane, and this phenomenon probably represents the
most important driving force of their lateral segregation. A consequence of
this segregation is the membrane compartmentalization in microdomains,
earlier suggested in 1975. 1 Plasma membranes are now viewed as a mosaic
of microdomains, but their size and dynamics are still a matter of debate,
and lipid-protein interaction remains poorly understood (for recent reviews
see Refs. 2 and 3).
 
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