Figure 1.

The two major pathways for synthesizing diacylglycerol. In the monoacylglycerol pathway, MGAT produces diacylglycerol, the precursor of triacylglycerol and certain phospholipids, by covalently joining a fatty acyl moiety to monoacylglycerol. In the glycerol phosphate pathway, diacylglycerol is derived from the dephosphorylation of phosphatidic acid (PA), which is produced by sequential acylation of glycerol 3-phosphate (G-3-P). FA-CoA, fatty acyl-CoA; LysoPA, lysophosphatidic acid; P_i, inorganic phosphate; PC, phosphatidylcholine; PE, phosphatidylethanolamine.