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Updated: Jul 11, 2025

Isolation of Cellular Lipid Droplets: Two Purification Techniques Starting from Yeast Cells and Human Placentas
Published on: April 1, 2014
Burst of hopping trafficking correlated reversible dynamic interactions between lipid droplets and mitochondria under
Zhongju Ye1, Chengyuan Hu1, Junli Wang1
1Department of Chemistry Zhengzhou University Zhengzhou China.
Abstract:
Dynamic membrane contacts between lipid droplets (LDs) and mitochondria play key roles in lipid metabolism and energy homeostasis. Understanding the dynamics of LDs under energy stimulation is thereby crucial to disclosing the metabolic mechanism. Here, the reversible interactions between LDs and mitochondria are tracked in real-time using a robust LDs-specific fluorescent probe (LDs-Tags). Through tracking the dynamics of LDs at the single-particle level, spatiotemporal heterogeneity is revealed. LDs in starved cells communicate and integrate their activities (i.e., lipid exchange) through a membrane contact site-mediated mechanism. Thus the diffusion is intermittently alternated between active and confined states. Statistical analysis shows that the translocation of LDs in response to starvation stress is non-Gaussian, and obeys nonergodic-like behavior. These results provide deep understanding of the anomalous diffusion of LDs in living cells, and also afford guidance for rationally designing efficient transporter.
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