Review
Putting the pH into phosphatidic acid signaling
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* Corresponding author: Christopher JR Loewen christopher.loewen@ubc.ca
Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, Life Sciences Institute, University of British Columbia, 2350 Health Sciences Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z3
BMC Biology 2011, 9:85 doi:10.1186/1741-7007-9-85
Published: 2 December 2011Abstract
The lipid phosphatidic acid (PA) has important roles in cell signaling and metabolic regulation in all organisms. New evidence indicates that PA also has an unprecedented role as a pH biosensor, coupling changes in pH to intracellular signaling pathways. pH sensing is a property of the phosphomonoester headgroup of PA. A number of other potent signaling lipids also contain headgroups with phosphomonoesters, implying that pH sensing by lipids may be widespread in biology.