How Does Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation in Model Membranes Reflect Cell Membrane Heterogeneity?

First figure shows visualization of phase separation in synthetic and cell-derived membrane systems using phase selective probesSecond figure shows membrane order in liquid-ordered and liquid-disodered phases of synthetic and cell-derived membranes.Figures are provided in Inkscape svg format. Images are taken with confocal microscopy, and generalized polarization map was generated by using custom FiJi software (Sezgin et al, ChemPhysChem, 2015). ## Abstract of the paper Although liquid–liquid phase separation of cytoplasmic or nuclear components in cells has been a major focus in cell biology, it is only recently that the principle of phase separation has been a long-standing concept and extensively studied in biomembranes.

Membrane phase separation has been reconstituted in simplified model systems, and its detailed physicochemical principles, including essential phase diagrams, have been extensively explored. These model membrane systems have proven very useful to study the heterogeneity in cellular membranes, however, concerns have been raised about how reliably they can represent native membranes. In this review, we will discuss how phase-separated membrane systems can mimic cellular membranes and where they fail to reflect the native cell membrane heterogeneity.