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Nature Cell Biology 6, 180 - 181 (2004)
doi:10.1038/ncb0304-180

To cluster or not to cluster: FRETting over rafts

Susan K. Pierce1

  1. Susan K. Pierce is in the Laboratory of Immunogenetics, National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD 20852, USA.
    e-mail: spierce@nih.gov


Lipid rafts are thought to be important for signalling cascades by compartmentalizing signalling components in the membrane. This view has recently come under fire because the common method used for isolation of rafts — detergent extraction — is fraught with artefacts. A variety of techniques, including FRET, have been used recently to investigate rafts in their native environment in intact cells. Now, FRET analysis provides evidence that rafts may not have a role in T-cell activation after all.

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