ArticleThe Journal of cell biology2002
Phospholipids undergo hop diffusion in compartmentalized cell membrane.
Article in The Journal of cell biology, 2002. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 361 papers.
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Who cites it
361 citing papers in PubMed, 912 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Development of ultrafast single fluorescent-molecule imaging and its application to unravel plasma membrane structure and function in live cells.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2026Article
- Oligo DNA-based quantum dot (QD) single-particle tracking for multicolor single-molecule imaging.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2026Article
- High-Speed Interferometric Scattering Tracking Microscopy of Compartmentalized Lipid Diffusion in Living Cells.Chemphyschem : a European journal of chemical physics and physical chemistry · 2025Article
- The variational modulus density theory explains mechanical responses of cell membranes and membrane crosslinkers.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Sense, plug, and seal: proteins as both rapid responders and constitutive barriers supporting organelle compartmentalization.Molecular biology of the cell · 2025Review
- Concurrent diffusion of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and fluorescent cholesterol disclosed by two-colour sub-millisecond MINFLUX-based single-molecule tracking.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Revised Diffusion Law Permits Quantitative Nanoscale Characterization of Membrane Organization.Analytical chemistry · 2025Article
- Targeted elimination of mesenchymal-like cancer cells through cyclic stretch activation of Piezo1 channels: the physical aspects.Biophysical reviews · 2025Review
- Fast Single-Particle Tracking of Membrane Proteins Combined with Super-Resolution Imaging of Actin Nanodomains.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Axon initial segment structure and function in health and disease.Physiological reviews · 2025Review
- Synthetic Lipid Biology.Chemical reviews · 2025Review
- Intracellular pressure controls the propagation of tension in crumpled cell membranes.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Single molecule dynamics in a virtual cell combining a 3-dimensional matrix model with random walks.Scientific reports · 2024Article
301 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The diffusion rate of lipids in the cell membrane is reduced by a factor of 5-100 from that in artificial bilayers. This slowing mechanism has puzzled cell biologists for the last 25 yr. Here we address this issue by studying the movement of unsaturated phospholipids in rat kidney fibroblasts at the single molecule level at the temporal resolution of 25 micros. The cell membrane was found to be compartmentalized: phospholipids are confined within 230-nm-diameter (phi) compartments for 11 ms on average before hopping to adjacent compartments. These 230-nm compartments exist within greater 750-nm-phi compartments where these phospholipids are confined for 0.33 s on average. The diffusion rate within 230-nm compartments is 5.4 microm2/s, which is nearly as fast as that in large unilamellar vesicles, indicating that the diffusion in the cell membrane is reduced not because diffusion per se is slow, but because the cell membrane is compartmentalized with regard to lateral diffusion of phospholipids. Such compartmentalization depends on the actin-based membrane skeleton, but not on the extracellular matrix, extracellular domains of membrane proteins, or cholesterol-enriched rafts. We propose that various transmembrane proteins anchored to the actin-based membrane skeleton meshwork act as rows of pickets that temporarily confine phospholipids.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.