The Cell Surface

The Conference "Chemical and Immunologic Approaches to the Cell Surface " was organized as a multifaceted interaction between scientists representing various disciplines impinging on membrane biology. In many instances, this broad mixture of investigators yielded quite unusual scientific associations and interesting new dimensions to old problems, as the workers came to appreciate the advances, the shortcomings, and the hurdles of each area. Structural concepts of the membrane- -the nature, orientation, and inter-relationship of components--are emerging primarily from work on erythrocytes. Our understanding of surface biology demands reconstruction from the meager, but rapidly emerging, structural information. The excitement of membrane research depends in no small part on the concept that membranes are not static crystalline structures but rather dynamic systems with variable interrelationships between multiple components and phases, reflecting external environmental and internal cellular events. Modulation of the membrane can be readily studied in systems where discrete perturbation is introduced into the surface structure by stimulation with mitogens or reactions of immunoglobulins, resulting in wide-ranging effects. Examination of sequential changes such as patching and capping, in intact cells or in artificially reconstituted lipids, or lipide-protein, membrane systems probably represent useful iatrogenic probes to mimic genuine in vivo biophysical phenomena related to the mobility, cooperatively and constraint of surface components. The concept of solubilizing membrane components represents a more aggressive approach to the biochemical study of the surface, than does the passive dependence on the analysis of naturally soluble components, such as blood group substances shed into colostrum, ovarian cyst fluid, or gastric mucus. By separating surface glycoproteins, glycolipids, lipids, and protein components from the bulk sea of lipid, solubilization has achieved some success in dissecting the chemical nature of these moieties. Increasingly sophisticated chemical analysis is being used to compare artificially solubilized derivatives with naturally shed materials, such as HL-A antigens, P2 microglobulin, and immunoglobulins of plasma, in order to understand the relevance of the products to the native state and to thereby reconstruct the interrelationships of macromolecules in the cell surface. The synthesis of such structural and analytic data may yield

Year

1974

Language

English

Publisher

Springer

Editions

3

Pages

280

ISBN

9780306390517

Data source: Wikidata