GUILT BY INSOLUBILITY - DOES A PROTEINS DETERGENT INSOLUBILITY REFLECT CAVEOLAR LOCATION

Several recent papers have described a simple approach to isolate cave olae and proteins involved in apical sorting in epithelial cells that is based on their detergent insolubility. These publications have exci ted such diverse fields of cell biology as intracellular protein trans port, signal transduction and, in particular research into caveolae. I n this article Kurzchalia, Hartmann and Dupree argue that a more criti cal evaluation of this detergent insolubility is needed before a subce llular location or function can be ascribed to a protein.