Scientists’ understanding of lipids is limited to their role as things that hold proteins. A study from Swasti Raychaudhuri’s lab challenges this view.

Our bodies are made of cells. Each cell is a soup of smaller components, all working together to execute the body’s various functions. Perhaps the most well-known of these components are proteins — long chains of amino acids that cells make with instructions from the DNA. When the DNA changes, the cell is able to make new proteins, sometimes with new functions, and in this way proteins are understood to be an integral part of evolution.