Lipids are not free to diffuse around the cell membrane. Rather they are constrained not just by all the embedded proteins but also by the cytoskeleton, which, it has been suggested, corral the lipids. In this paper, we show by very large coarse-grained simulations of a realistic model of the plasma membrane how compartmentalisation leads to reduced, anomalous diffusion of both lipids and proteins.

This is the first in a set of three papers that bring my research on cell signalling and membranes in the within the to a close and is available to download .