Nanoroughness Strongly Impacts Lipid Mobility in Supported Membranes.

In vivo lipid membranes interact with rough supramolecular structures such as protein clusters and fibrils. How these features whose size ranges from a few nanometers to a few tens of nanometers impact lipid and protein mobility is still being investigated. Here, we study supported phospholipid bilayers, a unique biomimetic model, deposited on etched surfaces bearing nanometric corrugations.

Biology of human epidermal Langerhans cells: cell cycle studies.

Langerhans cells (LC) are considered to play an important role in the initiation of the immune response in the skin. This study was performed to analyse the kinetics of LC in normal human epidermis. Using flow cytometry (FCM), we have applied three methods to estimate LC DNA distribution: FCM DNA measurement in LC-enriched suspensions (70-90% purity), FCM-correlated analysis of DNA and OKT6-positive cells in original epidermal cell suspensions, and staining of LC-enriched suspensions by the Feulgen technique on microscopic slides and counter labelling of contaminating keratinocytes with anti-keratin antiserum to eliminate them from the LC DNA estimation.