Regulating Lipid Composition Rationalizes Acyl Tail Saturation Homeostasis in Ectotherms.

ABSTRACT: Cell membranes mainly consist of lipid bilayers with an actively regulated composition. The underlying processes are still poorly understood, in particular, how the hundreds of components are controlled. Cholesterol has been found to correlate with phospholipid saturation for reasons that remain unclear. To better understand the link between cell membrane regulation and chemical composition, we establish a computational framework based on chemical reaction networks, resulting in multiple semigrand canonical ensembles. By running computer simulations, we show that regulating the chemical potential of lipid species is sufficient to reproduce the experimentally observed increase in acyl tail saturation with added cholesterol. Our model proposes a different picture of lipid regulation in which

SUBMITTER: Girard M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7474175 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature