Abstract
The cell membranes play a key role in the virus cycle, since viruses are obligate intracellular parasites. Their composition is highly heterogeneous, and they are made of hundreds of different lipids. Despite a common organisation in lipid bilayers, the reciprocal affinity of the lipids tends to segregate them in microdomains such as membrane rafts. Rafts are mainly composed of sphingolipids and cholesterol, which tend to tightly pack away from other lipids. This renders them resistant to cold solubilization by non‐ionic detergent, and allows their physical separation by flotation. They attract proteins having specific targeting signals. Being highly dynamic structures with variable composition and size, they constitute suitable platforms to allow and\or regulate several steps of the virus replication cycle including entry, assembly and budding