Sperm membranes change in structure and composition upon ejaculation to undergo capacitation, a molecular transformation which enables spermatozoa to undergo the acrosome reaction and be capable of fertilization. Changes to the membrane environment including lipid composition, specifically lipid microdomains, may be responsible for enabling capacitation. To study the effect of lipid environment...

BACKGROUND The hydatid disease parasite Echinococcus granulosus has a restricted lipid metabolism, and needs to harvest essential lipids from the host. Antigen B (EgAgB), an abundant lipoprotein of the larval stage (hydatid cyst), is thought to be important in lipid storage and transport. It contains a wide variety of lipid classes, from highly hydrophobic compounds to phospholipids. Its protei...

Rat high density lipoproteins (HDL) were labeled with a series of phosphatidylcholines and ether analogs of phosphatidylcholine. The rates of turnover of the phosphatidylcholine ethers in the rat decreased as a function of increasing hydrophobicity and were more than five times faster than those of apolipoprotein A-I turnover and spontaneous lipid transfer. The major tissue sites for uptake wer...

Phosphatidylcholine transfer protein (PC-TP) is a cytosolic lipid transfer protein that is highly expressed in liver and catalyzes intermembrane transfer of phosphatidylcholines in vitro. To explore a role for PC-TP in the hepatocellular trafficking of biliary phosphatidylcholines, we characterized biliary lipid secretion using Pctp(-/-) and wild-type littermate control mice with C57BL/6J and F...

Some styrene/maleic acid (SMA) copolymers solubilise membrane lipids and proteins to form polymer-bounded nanodiscs termed SMA/lipid particles (SMALPs). Although SMALPs preserve a lipid-bilayer core, they appear to be more dynamic than other membrane mimics. We used time-resolved Förster resonance energy transfer and small-angle neutron scattering to determine the kinetics and the mechanisms of...

Resonance energy transfer between anthrylvinyl-labeled phosphatidylcholine as a donor and heme moiety of cytochrome c (cyt c) as an acceptor has been employed to explore the protein binding to model membranes, composed of phosphatidylcholine and cardiolipin (CL). The existence of two types of protein-lipid complexes has been hypothesized where either deprotonated or partially protonated CL mole...

Adipocyte differentiation-related protein (ADrP) is an intrinsic lipid storage droplet protein that is highly expressed in lung. ADrP localizes to lipid storage droplets within lipofibroblasts, pulmonary cells characterized by high triacylglycerol, which is a precursor for surfactant phospholipid synthesis by alveolar type II epithelial (EPII) cells. The developmental pattern of ADrP mRNA and p...

Arterial elastin appears to be a proteinlipid complex with the lipid component being bound to elastin peptide groups. In atherosclerotic lesions the lipid content of elastin increases progressively with increasing severity of atherosclerosis. The increases in the lipid content of plaque elastin are mainly due to large increases in cholesterol with about 80% of the cholesterol being cholesterol ...