Revealing Plasma Membrane Nano-Domains with Diffusion Analysis Methods

Nano-domains are sub-light-diffraction-sized heterogeneous areas in the plasma membrane of cells, which are involved in cell signalling and membrane trafficking. Throughout the last thirty years, these nano-domains have been researched extensively and have been the subject of multiple theories and models: the lipid raft theory, the fence model, and the protein oligomerization theory. Strong evidence exists for all of these, and consequently they were combined into a hierarchal model. Measurements of protein and lipid diffusion coefficients and patterns have been instrumental in plasma membrane research and by extension in nano-domain research. This has led to the development of multiple methodologies that can measure diffusion and confinement parameters including single particle tracking, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, image correlation spectroscopy and fluorescence recovery after photobleaching. Here we review the performance and strengths of these methods in the context of their use in identification and characterization of plasma membrane nano-domains.