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0The paper describes the development of Lipid-CLEM, a novel imaging workflow designed to visualize the nanoscale distribution of specific lipid molecules within cellular membranes. By combining minimally modified bifunctional lipid probes with correlative light and electron microscopy, researchers can now quantify lipid densities across suborganellar structures with high precision. This method overcomes traditional limitations in lipid imaging, such as rapid molecular movement and localization artifacts caused by bulky fluorescent tags. Using this technique, the study demonstrates that sphingomyelin is actively sorted within the early endosome, showing significant enrichment in intraluminal vesicles and depletion in recycling tubules. These findings reveal that lipids, much like proteins, exhibit highly organized partitioning that is critical for intracellular trafficking and signaling. Ultimately, Lipid-CLEM provides a powerful new tool for exploring the complex, ultrastructural functions of lipids in living systems.
References:
Lennartz H M, Khan S, Leng W, et al. Visualizing suborganellar lipid distribution using correlative light and electron microscopy[J]. Nature Cell Biology, 2026: 1-10.
