# Effects of cellular lipid droplet allocation on lipid droplet consumption and Drosophila embryogenesis

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER · 2021 · $46,036

## Abstract

Lipid droplets have recently emerged as an exciting, disease relevant topic of research. Droplet biology is
intrinsically linked to fat metabolism, which is in turn linked to a multitude of human diseases despite the
obvious medical importance of lipid droplets, much of their cellular biology is poorly understood. It has recently
become clear that throughout the animal kingdom lipid droplets are transported within the cell. It appears that
the cellular region a lipid droplet is positioned to affects its metabolic state allowing cells to transport droplets
into a ‘degradative region’ when starved or a ‘growth region’ when fed. Testing this hypothesis and examining
the overall importance of lipid droplet allocation in the developmental system of the Drosophila embryo is the
goal of this proposal. It is the Drosophila embryo where our mechanistic understanding of how lipid droplets
are transported is the most advanced. While the impetus of previous such research was to understand general
properties of active transport, I will now employ this system to droplet biology. The decades of transport driven
research done by our lab has yielded a vast repertoire of genetic tools which I plan to utilize to interrogate the
role transport mediated lipid droplet allocation between embryonic cells. My preliminary data shows that
disrupting proper transport of lipid droplets along microtubules diminishes turnover of triglycerides (stored in
lipid droplets) and may cause a delay in embryonic development. Intriguingly, droplet consumption because of
improper intracellular positioning fits nicely with data gathered from mammalian systems: mouse embryos
extensively reposition their lipid droplets post fertilization and mammalian cultured cells use microtubules to
reposition droplets depending on nutritional status. These strong similarities between mammals and flies not
only suggests conservation of transport mediated positioning of lipid droplets across taxa, but also supports the
notion that lipid droplet positioning itself may be a means regulating cellular lipid metabolism. I will test this at
an organismal level. This proposal aims to address why loss of lipid droplet based active transport impedes
their consumption and how that that failed consumption would then delay embryonic development. It seems
likely that improperly allocating droplets would cause a state of relative starvation in droplet-deprived cells.
Mammalian cell culture system have elucidated several markers of cellular lipid starvation which I will examine
in these lipid droplet deprived embryos. Next, the delay in embryogenesis is likely caused by diminished
droplet consumption at the embryonic level which would globally diminish the energy supply. To pin this down,
I will use a panel of genetic mutants, which fail in lipid droplet allocation to varying degrees, to extrapolate the
relationship between failed lipid droplet consumption and delayed embryogenesis. These studies would
constitute strong...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10200107
- **Project number:** 5F31HD100127-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
- **Principal Investigator:** Marcus Daniel Kilwein
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $46,036
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-07-01 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10200107

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10200107, Effects of cellular lipid droplet allocation on lipid droplet consumption and Drosophila embryogenesis (5F31HD100127-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10200107. Licensed CC0.

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