ABC lipid transporters expressed in the brain
ABC subfamily | Transporter | Cellular location within the brain | Lipid substrates (including brain and periphery) | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Neurons | Astrocytes | Oligodendrocytes | Microglia | Choroid plexus epithelial cells | Capillary endothelial cells | References | |||
ABCA | ABCA1 | • | • | • | • | • | • | [87–89, 90–92] | Cholesterol, phospholipids (PC, PS), oxysterols (24S-HC) [93–95] |
ABCA2 | • | • | • | - | - | • | [87–89, 91, 92, 96] | Cholesterol, sphingomyelin, glycosphingolipids [97–99] | |
ABCA3 | • | • | • | • | - | • | [87, 89, 92, 96] | Possibly cholesterol, phospholipids (PC, PG) [89, 100–102] | |
ABCA7 | • | - | • | • | - | - | [87, 89] | Possibly cholesterol, phospholipids (PC, sphingomyelin) [103–105] | |
ABCA8 | • | • | • | • | • | - | [87, 89, 106] | Cholesterol [107] | |
ABCB | ABCB1 | • | • | - | • | • | • | [89, 91, 96, 108–110] | Possibly cholesterol, phospholipids (PC, PE, PS, sphingomyelin), glucosylceramide, glycosphingolipids [111–115] |
ABCC | ABCC6 | • | - | - | - | - | • | [91, 116] | Associated with plasma lipoprotein and HDL levels [117] |
ABCD | ABCD1 | - | • | • | • | - | • | [89, 91] | Very long-chain fatty acids (preference for saturated species), fatty acyl-CoAs [118, 119] |
ABCD2 | • | - | - | - | - | - | [89, 118] | Very long-chain fatty acids (preference for polyunsaturated species), fatty acyl-CoAs [118, 119] | |
ABCD3 | - | - | - | - | - | • | [96] | Very long-chain fatty acids, long and branched-chain acyl-CoA [118, 119] | |
ABCG | ABCG1 | • | • | • | • | • | • | [88–91, 120, 121] | Cholesterol, phospholipids (PC), oxysterols, desmosterol [88, 93, 120, 122, 123] |
ABCG4 | • | • | - | • | - | • | [89, 91, 120, 124] | Cholesterol, cholesterol synthesis intermediates (desmosterol, lathosterol, lanosterol), oxysterols [120, 125–127] |
Note that the substrates listed here are not limited to the brain and may reflect data from systemic studies since investigations regarding the cholesterol/lipid-transporting activity of ABC transporters within the brain are still limited. “•” denotes expression has been observed in the cell line, “-” indicates no expression or no data. PC: phosphatidylcholine; PE: phosphatidylethanolamine; PG: phosphatidylglycerol; PS: phosphatidylserine; ABCB: ABC transporter subfamily B; ABCC: ABC transporter subfamily C
The authors thank members of the Brown laboratory for their intellectural assistance to this review.
AJB and ICG: funding acquisition and conceptualization. AJB, ICG, ABC, LQ: writing-original draft and editing. LQ and ABC: visualization and preparation of figures and tables. All authors approved the final version.
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
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This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant [DP170101178]. Amanda B. Chai and Lydia Qian are supported by an Australian Research Training Program scholarship. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
© The Author(s) 2022.