Lipids, or fats, are essential to life. They form the membranes around cells, protecting them from the outside. In nature, ...

Steve Granick and colleagues 1 at the University of Illinois in Urbana report that nanoparticles can actively modulate the phase structure of lipid membranes so that the stiffness differs from ...

The authors present an introduction to the basics of lipid metabolism including an overview of the structure and function of lipoproteins and a description of the pathways of lipid metabolism.

Apolipoproteins (apo) such as apoB, apoC and apoE, coat lipoprotein particles and serve a number of functions including the transport of lipids in the blood and recognition of lipoprotein ...

Lipids include fats (solid at room temperature) and oils (liquid at room temperature). Lipids are an important part of a healthy diet. The body uses lipids as an energy store, as insulation and to ...

Viruses have an outer protein shell called a capsid which surrounds the viral nucleic acid. Enveloped viruses, such as HIV, have an additional layer comprising a lipid bilayer membrane which surrounds ...

Just as a chef perfects a dish by experimenting with flavors and textures, the researchers used an iterative process, testing variations to find the ideal structure for the ionizable lipid.

This work appears in Nature Chemistry. Life on Earth requires lipid membranes -- the structure of a cell that houses its interior mechanics and acts as a scaffold for many biological reactions.