Figure 6.
Three phases of lipid raft formation. Lipid rafts in phase 1 are in a resting state forming a nanoscale assembly consisting of cholesterol, sphingomyelin, and glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)‐anchored proteins. The majority of glycosphingolipids are also present. Phase 2 rafts represent activated, clustered states forming a raft platform. Phase 3 means the raft phase with large cluster formation containing some trans‐membrane molecules. The size of phase 3 rafts is large enough for them to be detected by current methods, ie, microscale rafts (modified from Lingwood et al39 with permission)