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Updated: Jul 10, 2026

Determination of Lipid Raft Partitioning of Fluorescently-tagged Probes in Living Cells by Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS)
Published on: April 6, 2012
Phosphatidylglucoside: a new marker for lipid rafts
Yasuko Nagatsuka1, Yoshio Hirabayashi
1Hirabayashi Research Unit, Brain Science Institute, The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
Abstract:
Lipid rafts are functional microdomains enriched with sphingolipids and cholesterol. The fatty acyl chain composition of sphingolipids is a critical factor in the localization of lipids in lipid rafts. The recent studies suggest that lipid rafts are more heterogeneous than previously thought. In addition, our discovery of a new glycolipid, phosphatidylglucoside (PtdGlc), also supports the notion of raft heterogeneity. The complete structural characterization of PtdGlc shows that it consists solely of saturated fatty acyl chains: C18:0 at the sn-1 and C20:0 at the sn-2 positions of the glycerol backbone. This unique fatty acyl composition comprising a single molecular species rarely occurs in known mammalian lipids. Although the structure of PtdGlc is similar to that of phosphatidylinositol, PtdGlc localizes to the outer leaflet of the plasma membrane and is possibly involved in cell-cell interaction signaling in the central nervous system.
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