Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 17, 2026

Construction of Model Lipid Membranes Incorporating G-protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs)
Published on: February 5, 2022
[Role of lipid rafts in trimeric G protein-mediated signal transduction]
Satoko Ohkubo1, Norimichi Nakahata
1Department of Pharmacology, National Institute of Health and Sciences, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan. satoko@nihs.go.jp
Abstract:
Lipid rafts and caveolae are microdomains in the cell membranes, which contain cholesterol, glycolipids, and sphingomyelin. While caveolae are relatively stable because caveolin, an integral protein, supports the structure, lipid rafts are considered to be unstable, being dynamically produced and degraded. Recent studies have reported that lipid rafts contain many signaling molecules, such as glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored proteins, acylated proteins, G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), trimeric and small G-proteins and their effectors, suggesting that the lipid rafts have an important role in receptor-mediated signal transduction. Therefore drugs that modify the composition of lipid rafts might influence the efficacy of cellular signal transduction. In this review, we demonstrate the role of lipid rafts in GPCR-G-protein signaling and also present our recent results showing that the wasp toxin mastoparan modifies G(q/11)-mediated phospholipase C activation through the interaction with gangliosides in lipid rafts.
More Related Videos
09:40Imaging G-protein Coupled Receptor (GPCR)-mediated Signaling Events that Control Chemotaxis of Dictyostelium Discoideum
Published on: September 20, 2011
10:59Determination of Lipid Raft Partitioning of Fluorescently-tagged Probes in Living Cells by Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS)
Published on: April 6, 2012
Related Concept Videos
Small GTPases - Ras and Rho
Three regulatory proteins control their activity:
Activation and Inactivation of G Proteins
IP3/DAG Signaling Pathway
Rab Cascades
Assembly of Signaling Complexes
Interaction domains in cell signaling
Interaction domains recognize exposed features of their binding partners containing post-translationally modified sequences,...
Amplifying Signals via Second Messengers