I have a debate on lipid rafts tomorrow and I will defend the stand that lipid rafts don't exist. I also want to learn what you think about this subject. Do lipid rafts exist?
Not a "proof of non-existence", which of course is impossible, but a good critique. See: Kenworthy, A. K. Have we become overly reliant on lipid rafts? EMBO Rep 9, 531–535 (2008).
Dear Cansu,
be careful on certain conclusions on the methodology used generally by basic researchers to study living organisms at the molecular or ultrastructural level. Briefly, let me explain you that, in the field of research of that specialised, cholesterol-enriched plasma membrane microdomains referred to as lipid rafts, the debate is over or the most criticisms are centered in that they could be mere artifacts due to the solubilisation of samples using basically cold nonionic detergents. In accordance, their buoyant density, because of higher lipid/protein ratio compared with bulk
membrane, permits their flotation in and recovery from discontinuous sucrose gradients after isopycnic centrifugation. Anyway you have to be extremely careful with this kind of assumption since the majority of cellular or molecular methodologies applied in the study of living organisms may involve vast manipulations that can lead us to artifactual or misinterpretations. For example, in this regard, do isolated or cultured cells have the same behavior or properties outside from tissues they come from? Do subfractionation techniques alter baseline composition or integrity of isolated cell nuclei?... Moreover, there is alternative extraction methods based in e.g. cold sodium carbonate extraction at high alkaline pH. However, it is also clear that different extraction or enrichment procedures result in characterisation of distinct lipid raft subsets. Thus, lipid rafts prepared by different extraction methods have considerable quantitative and qualitative differences in their lipid compositions... Have a nice discussion tomorrow!!!
Dear Jeffrey and Oleg,
many thanks for such interesting readings and work!
The debate was postponed to the next week. So i am still reading the articles and looking for new arguments.
Your explanation which was written with great effort was really wonderful. Thanks for your interest.
Debate was really good. Nobody won, but we've learned how to debate on a scientific subject.
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