Analysis of Lipid Particles from Yeast

Quantitative analysis of components from different subcellular fractions is a key to the understanding of metabolic function as well as to the origin, the biogenesis, and the crosstalk of organelles. The yeast is an excellent model organism to address such questions from the biochemical, molecular biological, and cell biological viewpoints. A yeast organelle which gained much interest during the last decade is the lipid particle/droplet (LP), a storage compartment for nonpolar lipids but at the same time an organelle actively contributing to cellular metabolism. In this chapter, we describe methods and techniques that are commonly used to analyze lipids from LP at the molecular level by thin-layer chromatography, gas–liquid chromatography, and mass spectrometry. We provide an easy to follow guideline for the isolation of these organelles, the qualitative and quantitative analysis of lipid components and show results obtained with these methods.