ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Liquid-crystalline phase transitions in lipid droplets are related to cellular states and specific organelle association.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers.
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Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 111 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals diethylstilbestrol and ketoconazole on lipid storage in in vitro matured bovine cumulus-oocyte complexes†.Biology of reproduction · 2026Article
- Heterogeneity, dynamics and organelle interactions of lipid droplets.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2026Review
- Quantitative FLIM of Lipid Droplet Polarity with a Deep-Red BODIPY Probe Reveals Signatures of Ferroptosis Resistance.Chemical & biomedical imaging · 2026Article
- Seipin-defined ER sites undergo distinct enrichment of factors for the biogenesis of sterol ester rich lipid droplets.iScience · 2026Article
- Cholesteryl Esters Modulate Lipid Droplet Rigidity and Monolayer Organization during Liver Cancer Progression.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Lipid droplet-associated proteins: Roles in cardiovascular diseases.Journal of lipid research · 2026Review
- Plant Lipid Droplets and Derived Lipidic Nano-Assemblies: Structure, Biogenesis and Pharmaceutical Applications.Plant biotechnology journal · 2026Review
- Cholesterol-containing lipid crystals can directly stiffen the rat steatotic liver before fibrosis.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Dynamics of Fanconi anemia protein D2 in association with nuclear lipid droplet formation.Journal of cell science · 2025Article
- Navigating lipid droplet proteins - part II: molecular mechanisms underlying ER-to-lipid droplet protein partitioning.Biochemical Society transactions · 2025Review
- Perilipins: key targets for regulating lipid metabolism and alleviating abnormal lipid metabolism through exercise.Diabetology & metabolic syndrome · 2025Review
- Remodelled cholesteryl ester enriched lipid droplets fuel flavivirus morphogenesis.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Cryo-SEM and large volume FIB-SEM of Arabidopsis cotyledons: Degradation of lipid bodies, biogenesis of glyoxysomes and reorganisation of organelles during germination.Journal of microscopy · 2025Article
- Structural insights into functional regulation of the human CPEB3 prion by an amyloid-forming segment.Structure (London, England : 1993) · 2025Article
- Micro magnetic resonance spectroscopy for noninvasive metabolic screening of mammalian embryos and oocytes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Essential Biology of Lipid Droplets.Annual review of biochemistry · 2025Review
- Nuclear envelope-associated lipid droplets are enriched in cholesteryl esters and increase during inflammatory signaling.The EMBO journal · 2025Article
- Tools to Dissect Lipid Droplet Regulation, Players, and Mechanisms.ACS chemical biology · 2025Review
- Article
- Lipid droplets and cellular lipid flux.Nature cell biology · 2024Review
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Lipid droplets (LDs) are ubiquitous organelles comprising a central hub for cellular lipid metabolism and trafficking. This role is tightly associated with their interactions with several cellular organelles. Here, we provide a systematic and quantitative structural description of LDs in their native state in HeLa cells enabled by cellular cryoelectron microscopy. LDs consist of a hydrophobic neutral lipid mixture of triacylglycerols (TAG) and cholesteryl esters (CE), surrounded by a single monolayer of phospholipids. We show that under normal culture conditions, LDs are amorphous and that they transition into a smectic liquid-crystalline phase surrounding an amorphous core at physiological temperature under certain cell-cycle stages or metabolic scenarios. Following determination of the crystal lattice spacing of 3.5 nm and of a phase transition temperature below 43 °C, we attributed the liquid-crystalline phase to CE. We suggest that under mitotic arrest and starvation, relative CE levels increase, presumably due to the consumption of TAG metabolites for membrane synthesis and mitochondrial respiration, respectively, supported by direct visualization of LD-mitochondrial membrane contact sites. We hypothesize that the structural phase transition may have a major impact on the accessibility of lipids in LDs to enzymes or lipid transporters. These may become restricted in the smectic phase, affecting the exchange rate of lipids with surrounding membranes and lead to a different surface occupancy of LD-associated proteins. Therefore, the composition and the resulting internal structure of LDs is expected to play a key role in their function as hubs of cellular lipid flux.
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