Lipid phosphate phosphatases
We are interested in understanding the developmental roles of lipid phosphate phosphatases (LPPs), encoded by the genes wunen (wun) and wunen2 (wun2) in Drosophila. LPPs are a class of multi-pass transmembrane enzymes that potentially function both intracellularly and at the cell surface to regulate lipid phosphate levels. In vitro substrates include phosphatidic acid, lysophosphatidic acid, sphingosine 1-phosphate and ceramide 1-phosphate.
LPPs (conserved and catalytic domains in yellow and red respectively) at the cell surface can dephosphorylate substrates such as sphingosine 1-phosphate leading to uptake of the lipid moiety.