A component of every biological cell, the selectively permeable cell membrane (or plasma membrane or plasmalemma) is a thin and structured bilayer of phospholipid and protein molecules that envelopes the cell. It separates a cell's interior from its surroundings and controls what moves in and out. Cell surface membranes often contain receptor proteins and cell adhesion proteins. There are also other proteins with a variety of functions. These membrane proteins are important for the regulation of cel ...
Phospholipid molecules in the cell membrane are "fluid," in the sense of free to diffuse and exhibit rapid lateral diffusion. Lipid rafts and caveolae are examples of cholesterol-enriched microdomains in the cell membrane. Many proteins are not free to diffuse. The cytoskeleton undergirds the cell membrane and provides anchoring points for integral membrane proteins. Anchoring restricts them to a particular cell face or surface – for example, the "apical" surface of epithelial cells that line the vertebrate gut – and limits how far they ...
The basic composition and structure of the plasma membrane is the same as that of the membranes that surround organelles and other subcellular compartments. The foundation is a phospholipid bilayer, and the membrane as a whole is often described as a fluid mosaic – a two-dimensional fluid of freely diffusing lipids, dotted or embedded with proteins, which may function as channels or transporters across the membrane, or as receptors. The model was first proposed by S.J. Singer (1971) as a lipid protein model and extended to include the fluid character in a pub ...
