Abstract #3360

1H NMR Spectroscopy Analysis of Isolated Intracellular Lipid Droplets from a Human Cancer Cell Line, BE(2)M17

Xiaoyan Pan¹, Martin Wilson¹, Carmel McConville¹, Marie-Anne Brundler², Theodoros Arvanitis³, Risto Kauppinen⁴, Andrew Peet^1,5

¹School of Cancer Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom; ²Histology, Birmingham Children's Hospital NHS, Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom; ³School of Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom; ⁴Radiology, Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, NH, United States; ⁵Oncology, Birmingham Children's Hospital NHS, Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom

Lipid droplets (LDs) have been associated with several important cellular processes. Previous NMR studies of extracted lipids have been performed on whole cells, which are dominated by membrane lipids. In this study, density-gradient ultracentrifugation was used to isolate LDs from other sub-cellular structures. 1H NMR was performed on whole cells, whole cell extracts and isolated LDs. An excellent agreement was observed between the lipid resonances present in the whole cell and isolated LD spectra supporting the claim that NMR-visible lipids originate from LDs. Spectra of the isolated LDs and whole cell extracts revealed differences between the ratio of cholesteryl compounds.