PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Zacharias, David A. AU - Violin, Jonathan D. AU - Newton, Alexandra C. AU - Tsien, Roger Y. TI - Partitioning of Lipid-Modified Monomeric GFPs into Membrane Microdomains of Live Cells AID - 10.1126/science.1068539 DP - 2002 May 03 TA - Science PG - 913--916 VI - 296 IP - 5569 4099 - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/296/5569/913.short 4100 - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/296/5569/913.full SO - Science2002 May 03; 296 AB - Many proteins associated with the plasma membrane are known to partition into submicroscopic sphingolipid- and cholesterol-rich domains called lipid rafts, but the determinants dictating this segregation of proteins in the membrane are poorly understood. We suppressed the tendency of Aequoreafluorescent proteins to dimerize and targeted these variants to the plasma membrane using several different types of lipid anchors. Fluorescence resonance energy transfer measurements in living cells revealed that acyl but not prenyl modifications promote clustering in lipid rafts. Thus the nature of the lipid anchor on a protein is sufficient to determine submicroscopic localization within the plasma membrane.