Much work has focused on the effects of ethanol on protein targets, and several excellent candidates for ethanol effector molecules have been identified [10], [11]. As the dominant theory for many years, the lipid fluidity hypothesis of ethanol intoxication proposed an indirect effect of ethanol on membrane proteins via perturbation of membrane lipid structure [12], [13]. While this theory has fallen out of favor for several reasons, including the observation of direct actions of ethanol on proteins, the relevance of lipid-protein interactions in modulating protein function and in modulating direct ethanol-protein effects are increasingly a target of study [14]–[17].
