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Title: Direct chemical evidence for sphingolipid domains in the plasma membranes of fibroblasts [High-Resolution Chemical Imaging of Sphingolipid Distribution in the Plasma Membrane]

Journal Article · · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
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  1. Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL (United States). School of Chemical Sciences
  2. National Inst. of Health, Bethesda, MD (United States). Program in Physical Biology, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Inst. of Child Health and Human Development
  3. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States). Glenn T. Seaborg Inst.

Sphingolipids play important roles in plasma membrane structure and cell signaling. Yet, their lateral distribution in the plasma membrane is poorly understood. Here we quantitatively analyzed the sphingolipid organization on the entire dorsal surface of intact cells by mapping the distribution of 15N-enriched ions from metabolically labeled 15N-sphingolipids in the plasma membrane using high-resolution imaging mass spectrometry. Many types of control experiments (internal, positive, negative, and fixation temperature), along with parallel experiments involving the imaging of fluorescent sphingolipids$$-$$both in living cells and during fixation of living cells$$-$$exclude potential artifacts. Micrometer-scale sphingolipid patches consisting of numerous 15Nsphingolipid microdomains with mean diameters of ~200 nm are always present in the plasma membrane. Depletion of 30% of the cellular cholesterol did not eliminate the sphingolipid domains, but did reduce their abundance and long range organization in the plasma membrane. In contrast, disruption of the cytoskeleton eliminated the sphingolipid domains. These results indicate that these sphingolipid assemblages are not lipid rafts, and are instead a distinctly different type of sphingolipid-enriched plasma membrane domain that depends upon cortical actin.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; National Institutes of Health (NIH); National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-07NA27344; FG02-07ER4647; CHE-1058809
OSTI ID:
1396208
Report Number(s):
LLNL-JRNL-463256
Journal Information:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 110, Issue 8; ISSN 0027-8424
Publisher:
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (United States)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 145 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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