Update Notice: Lipid-exchange Rate Assay for Lipid Droplet Fusion in Live Cells

Since publication of our protocol in Bio-protocol (https://bio-protocol.org/e3309), the article Somwar et al. (2011), “Live-cell imaging demonstrates rapid cargo exchange between lipid droplets in adipocytes”, came to our attention. Because it is useful for this protocol, we have updated the Background section of the original protocol to include the citation.

Background

…LDs are dynamic organelles which budded from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) (Gross et al., 2011; Choudhary et al., 2015) and continue to grow via triglyceride synthesis and lipid transfer from the ER (Fujimoto et al., 2007; Wilfling et al., 2013; Xu et al., 2018) or LD fusion (Gong et al., 2011; Somwar et al., 2011). LD-associated cell death–inducing DNA fragmentation factor alpha-like effector (CIDE) family proteins including CIDEA, CIDEB, and CIDEC/Fsp27 (Gao et al., 2017) are crucial regulators in the lipid homeostasis by governing atypical LD fusion and growth for lipid storage. Previously, we reported that CIDEC mediates LD fusion through directional lipid transfer from small (donor) to large (acceptor) LDs (Gong et al., 2011; Somwar et al., 2011).

References

17. Somwar, R., Roberts Jr., C. T. and Varlamov, O. (2011). Live-cell imaging demonstrates rapid cargo exchange between lipid droplets in adipocytes. FEBS Lett 585(12):1946-1950.