Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2017 Jun 29;16(1):128.
doi: 10.1186/s12944-017-0521-7.

Lipid Droplets in Health and Disease

Gizem Onal  1 , Ozlem Kutlu  2 , Devrim Gozuacik  3 , Serap Dokmeci Emre  4
Affiliations
Review

Lipid Droplets in Health and Disease

Gizem Onal et al. Lipids Health Dis. .

Abstract

Lipids are essential building blocks synthesized by complex molecular pathways and deposited as lipid droplets (LDs) in cells. LDs are evolutionary conserved organelles found in almost all organisms, from bacteria to mammals. They are composed of a hydrophobic neutral lipid core surrounding by a phospholipid monolayer membrane with various decorating proteins. Degradation of LDs provide metabolic energy for divergent cellular processes such as membrane synthesis and molecular signaling. Lipolysis and autophagy are two main catabolic pathways of LDs, which regulate lipid metabolism and, thereby, closely engaged in many pathological conditons. In this review, we first provide an overview of the current knowledge on the structural properties and the biogenesis of LDs. We further focus on the recent findings of their catabolic mechanism by lipolysis and autophagy as well as their connection ragarding the regulation and function. Moreover, we discuss the relevance of LDs and their catabolism-dependent pathophysiological conditions.

Keywords: Lipid droplets; chaperone-mediated autophagy; lipolysis; lipophagy.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Basic Morphology of Lipid Droplets
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Neutral Lipid Synthesis, Lipid Droplet (LD) Formation and Growth. a Metabolic pathway of triglyceride (TG) and sterol ester (SE) synthesis, b LD Formation from Endoplasmic Retikulum (ER) by Neutral Lipid Synthesis Enzymes (NLSE). Left panel shows budding model of LDs from ER; middle panel shows bicelle formation model of LDs originating from ER; right panel shows hatching model of LDs from ER
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Lipolysis of Lipid Droplets
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Lipid Droplet Degradation by Autophagy Mechanisms. a Lipophagy b Chaperone Mediated Autophagy (CMA)-dependent degradation
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Thiele C, Spandl J. Cell biology of lipid droplets. Curr Opin Cell Biol. 2008;20:378–385. doi: 10.1016/j.ceb.2008.05.009. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Greenberg AS, Egan JJ, Wek SA, Garty NB, Blanchette-Mackie E, Londos C. Perilipin, a major hormonally regulated adipocyte-specific phosphoprotein associated with the periphery of lipid storage droplets. J Biol Chem. 1991;266:11341–11346. - PubMed
    1. Welte MA. Expanding roles for lipid droplets. Curr Biol. 2015;25:R470–R481. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.04.004. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Zehmer JK, Huang Y, Peng G, Pu J, Anderson RG, Liu P. A role for lipid droplets in inter-membrane lipid traffic. Proteomics. 2009;9:914–921. doi: 10.1002/pmic.200800584. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Herker E, Ott M. Unique ties between hepatitis C virus replication and intracellular lipids. Trends Endocrinol Metab. 2011;22:241–248. doi: 10.1016/j.tem.2011.03.004. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources