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Updated: May 27, 2026

Fluorescence-Based Measurements of Phosphatidylserine/Phosphatidylinositol 4-Phosphate Exchange Between Membranes
Published on: March 14, 2021
At the membrane frontier: a prospectus on the remarkable evolutionary conservation of polyprenols and
Meredith D Hartley1, Barbara Imperiali
1Department of Biology and Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Abstract:
Long-chain polyprenols and polyprenyl-phosphates are ubiquitous and essential components of cellular membranes throughout all domains of life. Polyprenyl-phosphates, which include undecaprenyl-phosphate in bacteria and the dolichyl-phosphates in archaea and eukaryotes, serve as specific membrane-bound carriers in glycan biosynthetic pathways responsible for the production of cellular structures such as N-linked protein glycans and bacterial peptidoglycan. Polyprenyl-phosphates are the only form of polyprenols with a biochemically-defined role; however, unmodified or esterified polyprenols often comprise significant percentages of the cellular polyprenol pool. The strong evolutionary conservation of unmodified polyprenols as membrane constituents and polyprenyl-phosphates as preferred glycan carriers in biosynthetic pathways is poorly understood. This review surveys the available research to explore why unmodified polyprenols have been conserved in evolution and why polyprenyl-phosphates are universally and specifically utilized for membrane-bound glycan assembly.
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