A number of known plastidial-lipid trafficking proteins
(Benning 2008) are also present in the proteome of lipid
droplets. The presence of these presumably chloroplast
envelop proteins in the LD proteome supports the current
view that plastid envelops are important in the formation of
Chlamydomonas lipid droplet (Goodson et al. 2011). This is
also in line with recent data from higher plant models where
transorganellar complementation studies have led to the
proposition that hemi-membrane fusion at the plastid and
ER contact site facilitate inter-organellar interactions and
allow enzymes direct access to substrates present in both
organelle membranes (Mehrshahi et al. 2013, 2014). In
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, the observation that one single
plastidial x-3 fatty acid desaturase can act on the substrates
present in ER and plastid compartment further supports such
a view (Mehrshahi et al. 2014; Nguyen et al. 2013).