Structural and Metabolic Interrelationships Among Glycerophosphatides of Rat Liver In Vivo

Abstract

The specific activities of individual molecular species of rat liver diacylglycerylphosphorocholine (PC), diacylglycerylphosphoroethanolamine (PE), and diacylglycerophosphorylinositol (MPI) were determined and compared following intravenous injection of glycerol-14C. PC, PE, and MPI contained 41, 51, and 83%, respectively, tetraenoic species, and 40,17, and 9% combined mono-, di-, and trienoic species. The rest of the phosphatide mass of PC, PE, and MPI was contributed by 18, 32, and 8% penta- and hexaenoic species, respectively. The proportions of chemical classes of the glycerophosphatides differed by 1.1- to 18-fold while the fatty acid associations within the unsaturation classes common to these phosphatides varied 2.2- to 17-fold. After 5 min exposure to radioactive glycerol, the mono-, di-, and trienoic species of the PC, PE, and MPI possessed 13–18, 15–50, and 6–42 times, respectively, the specific activity of the tetraenes of the corresponding phosphatide classes. While the pentaenoic and hexaenoic species of PC and MPI had specific activities three to five times those of the respective tetraenes, the higher polyenes of PE were considerably more radioactive and approached the specific activity of the dienoic species of this phosphatide. With progressing time up to 60 min, the tetraenoic species of PC, PE, and MPI showed increases in relative specific activity of 50, 64, and 109%, respectively, in the three phosphatides. These results are consistent with an effective de novo synthesis of the oligoenoic species and a transacylation of the tetraenoic species of all liver glycerophosphatides tested. The proportional contribution of de novo synthesis in comparison to acyl transfer is apparently greater to the formation of PC and PE than to that of MPI.