Elucidating the Cellular Machinery for Lipid Storage in Plants

The overarching goal of this project is to understand the underlying mechanism for packaging storage lipids into lipid droplets in plant cells. Our group has identified several proteins involved in plant lipid droplet formation, but the inventory of proteins participating in this cellular process is far from complete. To search for new players involved in lipid droplet biogenesis and to gain more insights into how these players cooperate to package storage lipids into lipid droplets, we used an affinity capture approach coupled with mass spectrometry analysis to identify interactors of known lipid droplet-related proteins. Here, we used GFP-fused Arabidopsis thaliana LDIP and SEIPIN1 as baits to pull down their interactors in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves. The proteins that co-immunoprecipitated with GFP-LDIP and GFP-SEIPIN1 were analyzed by mass spectrometry and the results are shown here in this dataset.