Cell
Volume 156, Issue 3, 30 January 2014, Pages 428-439
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Article
Dividing Cells Regulate Their Lipid Composition and Localization

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2013.12.015Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • Systematic, comprehensive lipid analyses in dividing cells and midbodies

  • AFM shows dividing cells and their lipids have specific physical properties

  • Screen of lipid biosynthetic enzymes reveals 23 genes required for division

  • Perturbing lipid levels alters actin cytoskeleton and cell stiffness

Summary

Although massive membrane rearrangements occur during cell division, little is known about specific roles that lipids might play in this process. We report that the lipidome changes with the cell cycle. LC-MS-based lipid profiling shows that 11 lipids with specific chemical structures accumulate in dividing cells. Using AFM, we demonstrate differences in the mechanical properties of live dividing cells and their isolated lipids relative to nondividing cells. In parallel, systematic RNAi knockdown of lipid biosynthetic enzymes identified enzymes required for division, which highly correlated with lipids accumulated in dividing cells. We show that cells specifically regulate the localization of lipids to midbodies, membrane-based structures where cleavage occurs. We conclude that cells actively regulate and modulate their lipid composition and localization during division, with both signaling and structural roles likely. This work has broader implications for the active and sustained participation of lipids in basic biology.

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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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These authors contributed equally to this work

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Present address: Department of Chemistry, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA