The New Face of the Lipid Droplet: Lipid Droplet Proteins.

The lipid droplet (LD) is an organelle with vital functions found in nearly all organisms. LD proteomic research has provided fundamentally important insights into this organelle's functions. The review provides a summary of LD proteomic studies conducted across diverse organisms and cell and tissue types. The accumulated proteomic data are reviewed for evidence of a protein targeting mechanism for the organelle. The hypotheses for several specific localization mechanisms based on what is known about targeting mechanisms for other organelles and vesicles are provided. Although the nature of the mechanism is not known, the functional data demonstrate that the targeting mechanism and, indeed, the organelle itself, is conserved from prokaryotes to eukaryotes. It is hoped that the review will help inspire further research leading to novel discoveries in the field.