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Updated: Mar 11, 2026

Preparation of Chloroplast Sub-compartments from Arabidopsis for the Analysis of Protein Localization by Immunoblotting or Proteomics
Published on: October 19, 2018
Importance of phosphatidylcholine on the chloroplast surface
César Botella1, Juliette Jouhet1, Maryse A Block1
1Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire et Végétale, UMR5168, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Grenoble Alpes, Institut National Recherche Agronomique, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives, BIG, 17 Rue des Martyrs, F-38054 Grenoble, France.
Abstract:
In plant cells, phosphatidylcholine (PC) is a major glycerolipid of most membranes but practically lacking from the plastid internal membranes. In chloroplasts, PC is absent from the thylakoids and the inner envelope membrane. It is however the main component of the outer envelope membrane, where it exclusively distributes in the outer monolayer. This unique distribution is likely related with operational compartmentalization of plant lipid metabolism. In this review, we summarize the different mechanisms involved in homeostasis of PC in plant cells. The specific origin of chloroplast PC is examined and the involvement of the P4-ATPase family of phospholipid flippases (ALA) is considered with a special attention to the recently reported effect of the endoplasmic reticulum-localized ALA10 on modification of chloroplast PC desaturation. The different possible roles of chloroplast PC are then discussed and analyzed in consideration of plant physiology.
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