Here, there and everywhere – the importance of neutral lipids in plant growth and development

Abstract

In plants, lipids serve as one of the major and vital cellular constituents. Neutral lipids re-serves play an essential role in plant life cycle by providing carbon and energy equivalents for periods of active metabolism. The most common form of lipid storage are triacylglycerols (TAGs) packed into specialized organelles called lipid droplets (LDs). They have been obse-rved in diverse plant organs and tissues, like oil seeds or pollen grains. LDs consist of a core, composed mostly of TAGs, enclosed by a single layer of phospholipids that is decorated by a unique set of structural proteins. Moreover, the recent advances in exploration of LDs prote-ome revealed a plethora of diverse proteins interacting with LDs. This is likely the result of a highly dynamic nature of these organelles and their involvement in many diverse aspects of cellular metabolism, tightly synchronized with plant developmental programs and directly related to plant-environment interactions. In this review, we summarize and discuss the current progress in understanding the role of LDs and their cargo during plant life cycle, with a special emphasis on developmental aspects.