2025-09-01 マックス・プランク研究所
A microscope picture of human bone cells (U2OS) showing the localization of a lipid (phosphatidylethanolamine). The lipid is visible in orange, the cell membrane in purple, and endosomes in white.
© Kristin Böhlig and Juan Iglesias-Artola / Nature (2025) / MPI-CBG
<関連情報>
- https://www.mpg.de/25286838/fat-microscopy-imaging-lipids-in-cells
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09432-x
哺乳類細胞における脂質輸送の定量的イメージング Quantitative imaging of lipid transport in mammalian cells
Juan M. Iglesias-Artola,Kristin Böhlig,Kai Schuhmann,Katelyn C. Cook,H. Mathilda Lennartz,Milena Schuhmacher,Pavel Barahtjan,Cristina Jiménez López,Radek Šachl,Vannuruswamy Garikapati,Karina Pombo-Garcia,Annett Lohmann,Petra Riegerová,Martin Hof,Björn Drobot,Andrej Shevchenko,Alf Honigmann & André Nadler
Nature Published:20 August 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09432-x
Abstract
Eukaryotic cells produce over 1,000 different lipid species that tune organelle membrane properties, control signalling and store energy1,2. How lipid species are selectively sorted between organelles to maintain specific membrane identities is largely unclear, owing to the difficulty of imaging lipid transport in cells3. Here we measured the retrograde transport and metabolism of individual lipid species in mammalian cells using time-resolved fluorescence imaging of bifunctional lipid probes in combination with ultra-high-resolution mass spectrometry and mathematical modelling. Quantification of lipid flux between organelles revealed that directional, non-vesicular lipid transport is responsible for fast, species-selective lipid sorting, in contrast to the slow, unspecific vesicular membrane trafficking. Using genetic perturbations, we found that coupling between energy-dependent lipid flipping and non-vesicular transport is a mechanism for directional lipid transport. Comparison of metabolic conversion and transport rates showed that non-vesicular transport dominates the organelle distribution of lipids, while species-specific phospholipid metabolism controls neutral lipid accumulation. Our results provide the first quantitative map of retrograde lipid flux in cells4. We anticipate that our pipeline for mapping of lipid flux through physical and chemical space in cells will boost our understanding of lipids in cell biology and disease.
