Extraction, Separation, and Analysis of Plant Phosphoinositides and Complex Glycolipids

Progress in the understanding of how cells perceive signals and how the perception of specific signals leads to cellular responses has been dramatic over the last decade. One of the many new aspects of cell signaling that has emerged is that several types of lipids play key roles in the transfer of information across biological membranes. In mammalian cells it has long been suspected that a certain group of inositol-containing lipids, known collectively as the phosphoinositides, is linked to transmembrane signaling (1 ) but it is only in the last 10–15 yr that sufficient evidence has been provided to establish that the phosphoinositide signaling system (2 ,3 ), and other lipid signaling cascades (4 ), are essential components of a very wide range of signaling casettes in eukaryotes. The bewildering complexity of lipid signaling pathways can appear daunting to newcomers to the field, and may sometimes result in researchers electing to avoid entering into experimentations in this field.