期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:1979
卷号:76
期号:12
页码:6391-6395
DOI:10.1073/pnas.76.12.6391
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:Monolayer cultures of normal or transformed fibroblasts and of liver cells fixed in a glutaraldehyde solution containing 300 microM filipin, a sterol-specific polyene antibiotic, were freeze-fractured to study the distribution of cholesterol within their plasma membranes. Filipin-sterol complexes, recognizable as 25- to 30-nm protuberances scattered in the fracture face of plasma membrane, were absent from invaginations corresponding to large, bristle-coated pits (and possibly also from small, flask-shaped invaginations). These results suggest that invaginating regions on the cell surface are specialized plasma membrane domains with a lower cholesterol content than the surrounding membrane. The localized change in membrane fluidity due to the low cholesterol concentration could play a role in endocytosis.