Bøker av Edward D. Korn

Moreover, although membrane proteins are certainly of utmost importance, the more we learn about the functional properties of membrane proteins, the more we appreciate the unique features of phospholipids, without which biological membranes would be impossible.

Less than a year before this writing, a Nobel Prize was shared by Albert Claude, Christian de Duve, and George Palade, pioneers in the development of modern cell biology, of which membrane biology is an integral part.

Volume 3 continues the approach carried out in the first two volumes of this se ries of publishing articles on membrane methodology which include, in addition to procedural details, incisive discussions of the ap plications of the methods and of their limitations.

One property common to all cells is transport. If one can prepare a suitable plasma membrane fraction (sealed, impermeable vesicles with the necessary transport components intact), it becomes possible to separate the events of transport from any subsequent metabolism that may occur in the cell.

As a consequence of this membrane fluidity, a phospholipid molecule is very mobile within the plane of the membrane (moving a distance of about 1-2 fLm in 1 s) but the movement of a phospholipid molecule from one side of the membrane bilayer to the other (flip-flop) is very slow.

Arguing that although protein and carbohydrate may serve, in some cases, to bring membranes into sufficiently close proximity for fusion to occur and, in other cases, to remove peripheral and integral proteins from the regions that are to undergo fusion, the authors conclude that membrane fusion per se is solely a property of the lipid bilayer.