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Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Assessment of Submitochondrial Protein Localization in Budding Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Published on: July 19, 2021
Mitochondria do not contain lipid rafts, and lipid rafts do not contain mitochondrial proteins
Yu Zi Zheng1, Kyra B Berg, Leonard J Foster
1Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Centre for High-Throughput Biology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Abstract:
Lipid rafts are membrane microdomains involved in many cellular functions, including transduction of cellular signals and cell entry by pathogens. Lipid rafts can be enriched biochemically by extraction in a nonionic detergent at low temperature, followed by floatation on a sucrose density gradient. Previous proteomic studies of such detergent-resistant membranes (DRMs) are in disagreement about the presence of mitochondrial proteins in raft components. Here, we approach the status of mitochondrial proteins in DRM preparations by employing stable isotope labeling by amino acids in cell culture to evaluate the composition of differentially purified subcellular fractions as well as high-resolution linear density gradients. Our data demonstrate that F(1)/F(0) ATPase subunits, voltage-dependent anion selective channels, and other mitochondrial proteins are at best partially copurifying contaminants of raft preparations.
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