of this family are able hydrolyze other phospholipid substrates, such as cardiolipin, or even the phosphodiester bond constituting the backbone of DNA. Phosphatidic acid Many of phospholipase D's cellular functions are mediated by its principal product, phosphatidic acid (PA). PA is a negatively charged phospholipid, whose small head group promotes membrane curvature. It is thus thought to facilitate membrane-vesicle fusion and fission in a manner analogous to clathrin-mediated endocytosis. PA may also recruit proteins that contain its corresponding binding domain, a region characterized by basic amino acid-rich regions. Additionally, PA can be converted into a number of other lipids, such as lysophosphatidic acid (lyso-PA) or diacylglycerol, signal molecules which have a multitude of effects on downstream cellular pathways. PA and its lipid derivatives are implicated in myriad processes that include intracellular vesicle trafficking, endocytosis, exocytosis, actin cytoskeleton dynamics, cell proliferation differentiation, and migration. Mammalian PLD directly interacts with kinases like PKC, ERK, TYK and controls the signalling indicating that PLD is activated by these kinases. As choline is very abundant in the cell, PLD activity does not significantly affect choline levels, and choline is unlikely to play any role in signalling. Phosphatidic acid is a signal molecule and acts to recruit SK1 to membranes. PA is extremely short lived and is rapidly hydrolysed by the enzyme phosphatidate phosphatase to form diacylglycerol (DAG). DAG may also be converted to PA by DAG kinase. Although PA and DAG are interconvertible, they do not act in the same pathways. Stimuli that activate PLD do not activate enzymes downstream of DAG and vice versa. It is possible that, though PA and DAG are interconvertible, separate pools of signalling and non-signalling lipids may be maintained. Studies have suggested that DAG signalling is mediated by polyunsaturated DAG while PLD derived PA is monounsaturated or saturated. Thus functional saturated/monounsaturated PA can be degraded by hydrolysing it to form non-functional saturated/monounsaturated DAG while functional polyunsaturated DAG can be degraded by converting it into non-functional polyunsaturated PA. A lysophospholipase D called autotaxin was recently identified as having an important role in cell-proliferation through its product, lysophosphatidic acid (LPA). Structure Plant and animal PLDs have a consistent molecular structure, characterized by sites of catalysis surrounded by an assortment of regulatory sequences. The active site of PLDs consists of four highly conserved amino acid sequences (I-IV), of which motifs II and IV are particularly conserved. These structural domains contain the distinguishing