الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract When most lipids circulate in the body, they do so in the form of lipoprotein complexes. Simple, unesterified fatty acids are merely bound to serum albumin and other proteins in blood plasma, but phospholipids, triacylglycerols, cholesterol, and cholesterol esters are all transported in the form of lipoproteins. At various sites in the body, lipoproteins interact with specific receptors and enzymes that transfer or modify their lipid cargoes. It is now customary to classify lipoproteins according to their densities. The densities are related to the relative amounts of lipid and protein in the complexes. Because most proteins have densities of about 1.3 to 1.4 g/mL, and lipid aggregates usually possess densities of about 0.8 g/mL, the more protein and the less lipid in a complex, the denser the lipoprotein. Thus, there are high-density lipoproteins (HDLs), low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), intermediate-density lipoproteins (IDLs), very-low-density lipoproteins (VLDLs), and also chylomicrons. Chylomicrons have the lowest protein-to-lipid ratio and thus are the lowest density lipoproteins. They are also the largest. |