Gómez-Fernández Juan C, Goñi Félix M
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (A), Faculty of Veterinary Science, Universidad de Murcia, 30100 Murcia, Spain.
Instituto Biofisika (CSIC, UPV/EHU), and Department of Biochemistry, University of the Basque Country, 48940 Leioa, Spain.
Biomedicines. 2022 Oct 22;10(11):2672. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines10112672.
In the early 1970s, the existence of a "lipid annulus" stably surrounding the individual intrinsic protein molecules was proposed by several authors. They referred to a number of lipid molecules in slow exchange with the bulk lipid in the bilayer, i.e., more or less protein-bound, and more ordered than the bulk lipid. The annular lipids would control enzyme activity. This idea was uncritically accepted by most scientists working with intrinsic membrane proteins at the time, so that the idea operated like a myth in the field. However, in the following decade, hard spectroscopic and biochemical evidence showed that the proposed annular lipids were not immobilized for a sufficiently long time to influence enzyme or transporter activity, nor were they ordered by the protein. Surprisingly, forty years later, the myth survives, and the term 'annular lipid' is still in use, in a different, but even more illogical sense.
20世纪70年代初，几位作者提出存在一种稳定环绕单个内在蛋白分子的“脂质环”。他们提到一些脂质分子与双层膜中的大量脂质进行缓慢交换，即或多或少与蛋白质结合，且比大量脂质更有序。这些环形脂质会控制酶的活性。当时，大多数研究内在膜蛋白的科学家不假思索地接受了这个观点，以至于这个观点在该领域像一个神话一样流传。然而，在接下来的十年里，确凿的光谱学和生物化学证据表明，所提出的环形脂质并没有被固定足够长的时间来影响酶或转运蛋白的活性，它们也没有被蛋白质有序排列。令人惊讶的是，四十年后，这个神话仍然存在，“环形脂质”这个术语仍在使用，但其含义不同，甚至更不合逻辑。
