Direct quantification of ligand-induced lipid and protein microdomains with distinctive signaling properties

Lipid rafts are known as highly ordered lipid domains that are enriched in saturated lipids such as the ganglioside GM1. While lipid rafts are believed to exist in cells and to serve as signaling platforms through their enrichment in signaling components, they have never been directly observed in the plasma membrane without treatments that artificially cluster GM1 into large lattices. Here we report that microscopic GM1-enriched domains can form, without lipid crosslinking, in the plasma membrane of live mammalian cells expressing the EphA2 receptor tyrosine kinase in response to its ligand ephrinA1-Fc. The GM1-enriched microdomains form concomitantly with EphA2-enriched microdomains, but only partially co-localize with them. To gain insight into how plasma membrane heterogeneity controls signaling, we quantify the degree of EphA2 segregation and study initial EphA2 signaling steps in both EphA2-enriched and EphA2-depleted domains. By measuring dissociation constants, we demonstrate that EphA2 oligomerization is the same in EphA2-enriched and -depleted domains. However, EphA2 interacts preferentially with its downstream effector SRC in EphA2-depleted domains. The ability to induce microscopic GM1-enriched domains in live cells using a ligand for a transmembrane receptor will give us unprecedented opportunities to study the biology of lipid rafts.

What do nanometer molecular trajectories tell us about heterogeneous cell surface domaines?

Plasma membrane heterogeneity is implicit in the existence of specialized cell surface organelles which are necessary for cellular function; coated pits, post and pre-synaptic terminals, microvillae, caveolae, tight junctions, focal contacts and endothelial polarization are examples. The persistence of these discrete molecular aggregates depends on localized restraint of the constituent molecules within specific domaines in the cell surface by strong intermolecular bonds and/or anchorage to extended cytoskeleton. The observed plasticity of many of organelles and the dynamical modulation of domaines induced by cellular signaling evidence evanescent intermolecular interactions even in conspicuous aggregates. There is also strong evidence that universal restraints on the mobility of cell surface proteins persist virtually everywhere in cell surfaces, not only in the discrete organelles. Diffusion of cell surface proteins is slowed by several orders of magnitude relative to corresponding protein diffusion coefficients in isolated lipid membranes as has been determined by various ensemble average methods of measurement such as fluorescence photobleaching recovery(FPR).