AChE is not a transmembrane protein, rather it is anchored to the plasma membrane by the proline rich membrane anchor (PRiMA) which is a 20-kDa type I transmembrane protein which can be acylated (Henderson et al., 2010; Xie et al., 2010b) . PRiMA contains a CRAC (cholesterol recognition amino acid consensus) motif which sequesters PRiMA into lipid rafts and hence AChE is also partly associated with rafts although the functional significance of this interaction is unclear (Xie et al., 2010a) . It has been suggested that the lipid raft localization and shedding of AChE may have a certain role in the pathology of AD (Hicks et al., 2011) .