Figure 1.

Chemical structure of main lipid classes and composition of cell membranes. The mammalian plasma membrane consists of three lipid classes, namely glycerophospholipids (depicted in blue), sphingolipids (purple), and sterols (yellow) (A). Functionally, the cellular membrane is a lipid bilayer forming both, lipid raft and non-raft domains. Lipid rafts are enriched in sphingolipids, cholesterol, glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored proteins and some transmembrane proteins, whereas non-raft domains are composed predominantly of glycerophospholipids and non-raft transmembrane proteins (B).