Membrane ruffling is the formation of motile cell surface protrusions containing a meshwork of newly polymerized actin filaments. Since cholesterol is essential for cellular fluidity I thought it was important for membrane ruffling but until now I found only one paper on the requirement of cholesterol in membrane ruffling in A431 cells. Are supplementary studies on it?
The protrusion on surface membrane is likely to involve cholesterol due the island-like appearance of the protruded area. The cholesterol molecules together with highly saturated shingomyelin could make them. I am not familiar with any study on that.
As you mentioned, cholestrol is a crucial molecule for membrane fluidity. There are many studies showing that removal of cholestrol would turn cells rigid. Most likely, membrane ruffling would be affected by cholestrol.
We did some studies (Ray et al, 1983) on the effects of stepwise removal of cholesterol on the structure and function of tightly sealed gastric microsomes. These uniformly oriented microsomes are highly enriched in H, K-ATPase that made the vesicles capable of accumulation H in exchange for K in presence of ATP. We observed that gradual removal of cholesterol by digitonin-treatment substantially inactivated both the ATPase activity and H-transport. Negative staining revealed large holes on the membranes resulting from cholesterol removal. Supplimentation of the depleted membranes with cholesterol restored the enzyme activity but not proton leakage, revealing the membrane structure was only partially restored. You get some idea on membrane ruffling by cholesterol from the studies.
Ray, TK, Nandi, J., Dannemann, A. and Gordon, GB (1983) Role of cholesterol in the structure and function of gastric microsomal vesicles. J. Celluilar Biochem. 21, 141-150
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