Biologists Get More PC Scientists interested in studying cell membrane associated lipids often encounter difficulty due to the nonspecific extraction methods used to isolate these lipids. New methods that could easily and rapidly isolate specific amphipathic lipids would be extremely useful for the biologists studying membrane biology or diseases associated with problems in lipid metabolism. Vassar et al. describe a new method that specifically isolates phosphatidylcholine (PC), a major component of the eukaryotic cell membrane. Traditionally, PC has been isolated in a two-step process involving the isolation of total lipids followed by a purification step, usually by either thin layer chromatography or high-performance liquid chromatography, to obtain pure PC. This procedure is time-consuming, requiring from 1 to 2 days to fully complete. Here, the authors have devised a simple, elegant system where a single extraction using a 9:1 hexanes to isopropanol mixture isolates pure PC in only 30 min. The author...