Phosphate starvation and membrane lipid remodeling in seed plants

Phosphate is an essential, yet scarce, nutrient that seed plants need to maintain viability. Phosphate-starved plants utilize their membrane phospholipids as a major source for internal phosphate supply by replacing phospholipids in their membranes with the non-phosphorus galactolipid, digalactosyldiacylglycerol. This membrane lipid remodeling has drawn much attention as a model of metabolic switching from phospholipids to the galactolipid. In the past decade, a considerable effort has been devoted to unraveling the molecular biology of this phenomenon. This review thus aims to summarize recent achievements with a focus on metabolic pathways during lipid remodeling. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.