ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the basic biochemical and functional properties of the fatty acid transport proteins. Cellular proteins that are designated as fatty acid transport proteins consist of two types: transmembrane proteins and intracellular cytoplasmic proteins. Nutritional regulation of fatty acid (FA) transport protein gene expression, in particular by FA itself, highlights the potential for a direct effect of diet on transcription, and demonstrates at the molecular level how diet can directly influence gene transcription, even in the absence of metabolic transformation. The dietary availability, intracellular transport, and trafficking of their respective ligands may, by association, also play a significant role in certain pathological states. The diffusion mechanism holds that unbound unesterified fatty acids bind to the outer leaflet of the membrane bilayer, become protonated, and then flip to the inner leaflet. A 40-kDa protein was purified based on its specific binding to an oleate-agarose column and was named fatty acid binding protein.
