Structural aspects of ganglioside-containing membranes

Abstract

The demand for understanding the physical role of gangliosides in membranes is pressing, due to the high number of diverse and crucial biological functions in which they are involved, needing a unifying thread. To this purpose, model systems including gangliosides have been subject of extensive structural studies. Although showing different levels of complication, all models share the need for simplicity, in order to allow for physico-chemical clarity, so they keep far from the extreme complexity of the true biological systems. Nonetheless, as widely agreed, they provide a basic hint on the structural contribution specific molecules can pay to the complex aggregate. This topic we address in the present review. Gangliosides are likely to play their physical role through metamorphism, cooperativity and demixing, that is, they tend to segregate and identify regions where they can dictate and modulate the geometry and the topology of the structure, and its mechanical properties. Strong three-dimensional organisation and cooperativity are exploited to scale up the local arrangement hierarchically from the nano- to the mesoscale, influencing the overall morphology of the structure.

Histochemical and immunoelectron microscopic analysis of ganglioside GM3 in human kidney

“…But recent report also revealed that GM3 might be accumulated in leading head of T lymphocyte [30]. The negative charge of ganglioside has been reported to be beneficial for tubular formation or curved shape of plasma membrane physicochemically [31,32]. Ganglioside may be a basic membrane structure component for cells with protrusion including neuron, lymphocyte, and podocyte.…”

Curvature factor and membrane solubilization, with particular reference to membrane rafts

“…The possibility must be considered that membrane intercalated detergent molecules may form oligomers, or complexes with membrane components, that act as effective entities and may have increased intrinsic (average) curvature. Notably, since ligand binding may affect the molecular shape and clustering of studied membrane components and thereby their true curvature‐dependent lateral distribution (Panasiewicz et al, 2003; Cantu et al, 2009; Tian and Baumgart, 2009), this issue should be further investigated.…”

Ganglioside-Lipid and Ganglioside-Protein Interactions Revealed by Coarse-Grained and Atomistic Molecular Dynamics Simulations

“…The experiments have focused on detecting lipid domains containing gangliosides, as reviewed in refs (27 and 35), for example. The primary advantage of MD simulations is that they can resolve detailed lipid interactions.…”