title: Fluorescent and photoactivable probes in depth-dependent analysis of membranes.
abstract: This report summarizes our efforts towards depth-dependent analysis of membranes by design of suitable fluorescent and photoactivable lipid probes, which can be incorporated into membranes. The objective of depth-dependent analysis has been two fold, one to obtain information on lipid domains and other on transmembrane domains of membrane-bound proteins. In view of increasing importance of lipid rafts and other localized domain and limited success in case of structure determination of membrane-bound proteins vis-à-vis their soluble counterparts, it is tempting to rapidly attach fluorescent or photoactivable probes to lipids to get a probes where relatively little attention is paid to design of such probes. We have shown here how careful design of such probes is required to immobilize such probes in membranes for effective depth-dependent analysis of membranes. An effective design has become important when identification of putative transmembrane domains predicted primarily from the genome data based on hydropathy plots, often needs confirmation by contemporary methodology.
authors.affiliation: Biomembrane Lab, Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology Center, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400 076, India. anillala@iitb.ac.in
authors.forename: Anil K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Lala
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001692:Biological Transport; D002462:Cell Membrane / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000469:parasitology; D002746:Chlorpromazine / Q000493:pharmacokinetics; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes / Q000138:chemical synthesis; D006801:Humans; D008081:Liposomes / Q000737:chemistry*; D008560:Membrane Fluidity; D019920:Photoaffinity Labels; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D008081:Liposomes; D019920:Photoaffinity Labels; D002746:Chlorpromazine