Akihiro Kusumi

Akihiro Kusumi
Akihiro Kusumi
楠見明弘
	in Onna Village, Kunigami District, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan in November 2022
Born	October 1952 (age 72); Kyoto, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Alma mater	Kyoto University
Known for	Proposing the membrane-skeleton fence model to explain hop diffusion
	Scientific career
Fields	Biophysics, Molecular biology
Institutions	Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (from 2021)

Akihiro Kusumi (楠見明弘, Kusumi Akihiro, born October 1952^[1]) is a Japanese biologist who proposed an explanation for reduced diffusion speed of lipid and protein molecules in the cell membrane, based on a model of hop diffusion in which lipids are confined to a reduced space, created by membrane-skeleton-induced compartments. These compartments allow the lipids or proteins to diffuse freely in a limited region and also limit the diffusion to neighboring compartments on the membrane. Getting to a new compartment is called "hop diffusion" while diffusion in the compartment is allowed by Brownian movement, the compartments of the cell are responsible of the reduced diffusion speed of the lipid or proteins when compared to artificial vesicles.^[2]

Citations

JCB article on "hop diffusion"
Paradigm shift of the plasma membrane concept from the two-dimensional continuum fluid to the partitioned fluid: high-speed single-molecule tracking of membrane molecules. Annu. Rev. Biophys. struct. 2005. 34:351-78. doi: 10.1146/annurev.biophys.34.040204.144637. [1]

References

^ ^a ^b "平成10年度発足4プロジェクト決定". JSTニュース (in Japanese). 24: 2–5. 1998.
^ Paradigm shift of the plasma membrane concept from the two-dimensional continuum fluid to the partitioned fluid: high-speed single-molecule tracking of membrane molecules. Annu. Rev. Biophys. struct. 2005. 34:351-78. doi: 10.1146/annurev.biophys.34.040204.144637