George Kumar, Senior Director of Medical Diagnostics, Pan Tumor and GI Cancers at AstraZeneca, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“New insights into how cells move lipids
Lipids do much more than form cell membranes—they fuel energy storage and regulate countless cellular processes. Yet, tracing their exact movements inside living tissue has been notoriously difficult.
In this week’s Nature, André Nadler, Alf Honigmann, and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany unveiled a breakthrough approach:
- Fluorescent lipid probes to visualize transport in real time
- Mass spectrometry to track lipid conversions
- Quantitative kinetic modeling to map the flow
Their work reveals that up to 90% of lipid exchange between organelles is driven by dedicated lipid-transport proteins—not vesicles, reshaping how we think about intracellular logistics.
The cover image highlights this discovery: a single phospholipid species (orange) at the plasma membrane with mitochondria (blue) and endosomes (purple).
This is a powerful example of how advanced imaging and modeling are transforming our understanding of cell biology.
Figure Courtesy: Cover image: Kristin Böhlig”
Title: Quantitative imaging of lipid transport in mammalian cells
Authors: 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
Read the Full Article on Nature
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