Evidence map›Paper›PMID 32731358›Full record

ArticleMembranes2020

Recent Experiments Support a Microemulsion Origin of Plasma Membrane Domains: Dependence of Domain Size on Physical Parameters.

David W Allender, M Schick

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Membranes, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Review
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

David W AllenderDepartment of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
M SchickDepartment of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.ORCID 0000-0002-9019-0324

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

It is widely, but not universally, believed that the lipids of the plasma membrane are not uniformly distributed, but that "rafts" of sphingolipids and cholesterol float in a "sea" of unsaturated lipids. The physical origin of such heterogeneities is often attributed to a phase coexistence between the two different domains. We argue that this explanation is untenable for several reasons. Further, we note that the results of recent experiments are inconsistent with this picture. However, they are quite consistent with an alternate explanation, namely, that the plasma membrane is a microemulsion of the two kinds of regions. To show this, we briefly review a simplified version of this theory and its phase diagram. We also explicate the dependence of the predicted domain size on four physical parameters. They are the energy cost of gradients in the composition, the spontaneous curvature of the membrane, its bending modulus and its surface tension. Taking values of the latter two from experiment, we obtain domain sizes for several different cell types that vary from 58 to 88 nm.

Indexed as

domain sizemicroemulsionphase-separationplasma membranerafts

Identifiers

PMID32731358
PMCPMC7465459

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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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.