Transport of Unsaturated Fatty Acids

Abstract

Once the fatty acids from the diet are absorbed from the intestine and re-assembled into triacylglycerols, they face the biological problem of how water-immiscible lipids can be transported in the predominantly aqueous environment of the blood. This problem is overcome by stabilising the lipid particles with a coat of amphiphilic compounds: phospholipids and proteins. The resulting particles are lipoproteins (see Figure 6.1). They are not molecules in the normal sense. They are aggregates of individual lipid and protein molecules with a degree of structural organisation. Their mass should correctly be termed ‘particle mass’ rather than ‘molecular mass’.