title: Cholesterol, sphingolipids, and glycolipids: what do we know about their role in raft-like membranes?
abstract: Lipids rafts are considered to be functional nanoscale membrane domains enriched in cholesterol and sphingolipids, characteristic in particular of the external leaflet of cell membranes. Lipids, together with membrane-associated proteins, are therefore considered to form nanoscale units with potential specific functions. Although the understanding of the structure of rafts in living cells is quite limited, the possible functions of rafts are widely discussed in the literature, highlighting their importance in cellular functions. In this review, we discuss the understanding of rafts that has emerged based on recent atomistic and coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation studies on the key lipid raft components, which include cholesterol, sphingolipids, glycolipids, and the proteins interacting with these classes of lipids. The simulation results are compared to experiments when possible.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland.
authors.forename: Tomasz
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Róg
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland; MEMPHYS-Center for Biomembrane Physics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. Electronic address: Ilpo.Vattulainen@tut.fi.
authors.forename: Ilpo
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Vattulainen
mesh_terms: D002784:Cholesterol / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D006017:Glycolipids / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D008051:Lipid Bilayers / Q000737:chemistry; D021962:Membrane Microdomains / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D010713:Phosphatidylcholines / Q000737:chemistry; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D013107:Sphingolipids / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D013109:Sphingomyelins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D006017:Glycolipids; D008051:Lipid Bilayers; D010455:Peptides; D010713:Phosphatidylcholines; D011506:Proteins; D013107:Sphingolipids; D013109:Sphingomyelins; D002784:Cholesterol
keywords: Coarse-grained simulations; Lipid raft; Membrane domain; Membrane protein; Molecular dynamics simulations; Peptide; Receptor