AUTHOR=Owen Dylan M., Gaus Katharina TITLE=Imaging lipid domains in cell membranes: the advent of super-resolution fluorescence microscopy JOURNAL=Frontiers in Plant Science VOLUME=4 YEAR=2013 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2013.00503 DOI=10.3389/fpls.2013.00503 ISSN=1664-462X ABSTRACT=

The lipid bilayer of model membranes, liposomes reconstituted from cell lipids, and plasma membrane vesicles and spheres can separate into two distinct liquid phases to yield lipid domains with liquid-ordered and liquid-disordered properties. These observations are the basis of the lipid raft hypothesis that postulates the existence of cholesterol-enriched ordered-phase lipid domains in cell membranes that could regulate protein mobility, localization and interaction. Here we review the evidence that nano-scaled lipid complexes and meso-scaled lipid domains exist in cell membranes and how new fluorescence microscopy techniques that overcome the diffraction limit provide new insights into lipid organization in cell membranes.