The fluid mosaic membrane model proved to be a very useful hypothesis in explaining many, but certainly not all, phenomena taking place in biological membranes. New experimental data show that the compartmentalization of membrane components can be as important for effective signal transduction as is the fluidity of the membrane. In this work, we pay tribute to the Singer-Nicolson model, which is near its 30th anniversary, honoring its basic features, ''mosaicism'' and ''diffusion,'' which predict the interspersion of proteins and lipids and their ability to undergo dynamic rearrangement via Brownian motion. At the same time, modifications based on quantitative data are proposed, highlighting the often genetically predestined, yet flexible, multilevel structure implementing a vast complexity of cellular functions. This new ''dynamically structured mosaic model'' bears the following characteristics: emphasis is shifted from fluidity to mosaicism, which, in our interpretation, means nonrandom codistribution patterns of specific kinds of membrane proteins forming smallscale clusters at the molecular level and large-scale clusters (groups of clusters, islands) at the submicrometer level. The cohesive forces, which maintain these assemblies as principal elements of the membranes, originate from within a microdomain structure, where lipid-lipid, protein-protein, and protein-lipid interactions, as well as sub-and supramembrane (cytoskeletal, extracellular matrix, other cell) effectors, many of them genetically predestined, play equally important roles. The concept of fluidity in the original model now is interpreted as permissiveness of the architecture to continuous, dynamic restructuring of the molecular-and higherlevel clusters according to the needs of the cell and as evoked by the environment.

Lipid acyl double bonds in isolated mitochondrial membranes were gradually reduced by palladium-complex-catalysed hydrogenation, and the resulting saturation was monitored by fatty acid analysis of phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine and cardiolipin. The courses of hydrogenation of these phospholipids suggested that cardiolipin is in a membrane compartment which is less accessible to the applied catalyst. Native cardiolipin and its hydrogenation products were further characterized by analysis of their molecular diacylglycerol species. A decrease in the double bond content was accompanied by an increased amount of motionally restricted lipids at the hydrophobic interface of proteins as measured by two different spin-labelled lipids (C-14 positional isomers of spin-labelled stearic acid and phosphatidylcholine analogues). The protein-immobilized fraction of spin-labelled stearic acid increased in parallel with the hydrogenation of cardiolipin rather than of phosphatidylcholine or phosphatidylethanolamine. These data are interpreted in terms of a tight association of cardiolipin with membrane proteins, which becomes looser upon double bond reduction leading to the replacement of cardiolipin by spin-labelled stearic acid in the solvation shell. Thus the hydrophobic moiety of cardiolipin, characterized by double-unsaturated C18-C18 diacylglycerol species, seems to be an important structural requirement for the high protein affinity of this compound.