Chilling injury in plants—the role of membrane lipid fluidity

Abstract. Many authors have associated chilling injury in plants with changes in the mobility of membrane lipids but have not proposed specific mechanisms for this association. This paper explains how the mobility of membrane lipids can affect membrane thickness, membrane permeability, the electric field, cation concentration and water ordering near a membrane and hence change the conformation (and thus activity) of a membrane‐bound enzyme. The complications in such a model due to protein‐lipid interactions and lateral phase separations are also discussed.