Getting a Grip on Greasy Molecules
Getting a Grip on Greasy Molecules
复制标题
控制油腻分子
DOI：
10.1016/j.tibs.2019.03.006
复制
发表时间：
2019
影响因子：
13.8
通讯作者：
Baskin, Jeremy M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bumpus, Timothy W.;Baskin, Jeremy M.
脂质是结构和功能多样的生物代谢物，长期以来一直被证明难以研究，特别是作为分子成像的目标。这一挑战来自于它们的小尺寸、疏水性、快速扩散和运输速率，并且，也许最关键的是，它们作为代谢物的状态，其结构和生物合成不直接编码在基因组中，使得它们无法与荧光蛋白直接融合。这些研究对我们理解脂质生物学至关重要，但批量生物化学离体分析不携带空间信息，因此模糊了定位在下游生物学结果中的作用。最近的进展集中在研究完整细胞和组织内脂质的新方法上，以更好地阐明这些关键分子功能的空间组成部分。
Lipids are structurally and functionally diverse biological metabolites that have long proven difficult to study, particularly as targets for molecular imaging. This challenge arises from their small size, hydrophobicity, rapid diffusion and trafficking rates, and, perhaps most critically, their status as metabolites whose structures and biosynthesis are not directly encoded in the genome, making them inaccessible to direct fusion with fluorescent proteins.As a result of these challenges, most analytical methods for lipids rely on measuring lipid levels after sample homogenization and lipid extraction. These studies are critical to our understanding of lipid biology, but bulk biochemical, ex vivo analysis carries no spatial information and thus obscures the role of localization in downstream biological outcomes. Recent advances have focused on new approaches to study lipids within intact cells and tissues to better elucidate the spatial component of the function of these critical molecules.