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Updated: Jun 26, 2025

Lipid Droplet Isolation for Quantitative Mass Spectrometry Analysis
Published on: April 17, 2017
Nuclear lipid droplet: Guardian of nuclear membrane lipid homeostasis?
1Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology, Research Institute for Diseases of Old Age, Juntendo University Graduate School of Medicine, 2-1-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8421, Japan.
Abstract:
Lipid droplets (LDs) are cytoplasmic organelles, but they are also found within the nucleus in small numbers. Nuclear LDs that form at the inner nuclear membrane (INM) often increase in response to perturbation in phosphatidic acid (PA) and/or diacylglycerol (DAG), both implicated in various INM functions. Nuclear LDs also increase upon downregulation of seipin, a protein that can trap PA and DAG in the endoplasmic reticulum. Notably, both PA and DAG appear to be more densely distributed on the surface of nuclear LDs than in the INM. I propose that nuclear LDs play a role in regulating the PA and DAG level in the INM, thereby contributing to the lipid homeostasis in this compartment.
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