Fatty acid-binding proteins (FABPs) are abundant intracellular proteins that bind long-chain fatty acids with high affinity. Nine separate mammalian FABPs have been identified, and their tertiary structures are highly conserved. The FABPs have unique tissue-specific distributions that have long suggested functional differences among them. In the last decade, considerable progress has been made in understanding the specific functions of the FABPs and, in some cases, their mechanisms of action at the molecular level. The FABPs appear to be involved in the extranuclear compartments of the cell by trafficking their ligands within the cytosol via interactions with organelle membranes and specific proteins. Several members of the FABP family have been shown to function directly in the regulation of cognate nuclear transcription factor activity via ligand-dependent translocation to the nucleus. This review will focus on these emerging functions and mechanisms of the FABPs, highlighting the unique functional properties of each as well as the similarities among them.

Fatty acid binding proteins (FABPs) exhibit a ␤-barrel topology, comprising 10 antiparallel ␤-sheets capped by two short ␣-helical segments. Previous studies suggested that fatty acid transfer from several FABPs occurs during interaction between the protein and the acceptor membrane, and that the helical domain of the FABPs plays an important role in this process. In this study, we employed a helix-less variant of intestinal FABP (IFABP-HL) and examined the rate and mechanism of transfer of f luorescent anthroyloxy fatty acids (AOFA) from this protein to model membranes in comparison to the wild type (wIFABP). In marked contrast to wIFABP, IFABP-HL does not show significant modification of the AOFA transfer rate as a function of either the concentration or the composition of the acceptor membranes. These results suggest that the transfer of fatty acids from IFABP-HL occurs by an aqueous diffusionmediated process, i.e., in the absence of the helical domain, effective collisional transfer of fatty acids to membranes does not occur. Binding of wIFABP and IFABP-HL to membranes was directly analyzed by using a cytochrome c competition assay, and it was shown that IFABP-HL was 80% less efficient in preventing cytochrome c from binding to membranes than the native IFABP. Collectively, these results indicate that the ␣-helical region of IFABP is involved in membrane interactions and thus plays a critical role in the collisional mechanism of fatty acid transfer from IFABP to phospholipid membranes.

Intestinal fatty acid binding protein (IFABP) and liver FABP (LFABP), homologous proteins expressed at high levels in intestinal absorptive cells, employ markedly different mechanisms for the transfer of fatty acids (FAs) to acceptor membranes. Transfer from IFABP occurs during protein-membrane collisional interactions, while for LFABP, transfer occurs by diffusion through the aqueous phase. Earlier, we had shown that the helical domain of IFABP is critical in determining its collisional FA transfer mechanism. In the study presented here, we have engineered a pair of chimeric proteins, one with the "body" (ligand binding domain) of IFABP and the alpha-helical region of LFABP (alphaLbetaIFABP) and the other with the ligand binding pocket of LFABP and the helical domain of IFABP (alphaIbetaLFABP). The objective of this work was to determine whether the change in the alpha-helical domain of each FABP would alter the rate and mechanism of transfer of FA from the chimeric proteins in comparison with those of the wild-type proteins. The fatty acid transfer properties of the FABP chimeras were examined using a fluorescence resonance transfer assay. The results showed a significant modification of the absolute rate of FA transfer from the chimeric proteins compared to that of the wild type, indicating that the slower rate of FA transfer observed for wild-type LFABP relative to that of wild-type IFABP is, in part, determined by the helical domain of the proteins. In addition to these quantitative changes, it was of great interest to observe that the apparent mechanism of FA transfer also changed when the alpha-helical domain was exchanged, with transfer from alphaLbetaIFABP occurring by aqueous diffusion and transfer from alphaIbetaLFABP occurring via protein-membrane collisional interactions. These results demonstrate that the alpha-helical region of LFABP is responsible for its diffusional mechanism of fatty acid transfer to membranes.