Abstract

Nerve cells mould the lipid fabric of their membranes to ease vesicle fusion, regulate ion fluxes and create specialized microenvironments that contribute to cellular communication. The chemical diversity of membrane lipids controls protein traffic, facilitates recognition between cells and leads to the production of hundreds of molecules that carry information both within and across cells. With so many roles, it is no wonder that lipids make up half of the human brain in dry weight. The objective of neural lipidomics is to understand how these molecules work together; this difficult task will greatly benefit from technical advances that might enable the testing of emerging hypotheses.

Author affiliations

1. Department of Pharmacology, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA.
2. Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa 16163, Italy.
3. National Institute on Drug Abuse, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.

Correspondence to: Daniele Piomelli^1,2 Email: piomelli@uci.edu

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.