Utilization of fatty acids by rat liver slices as a function of medium concentration

Abstract

The rate of incorporation of palmitate-1-C14 into neutral lipids and phospholipids of rat liver slices in vitro and its conversion to C14O2 were shown to increase markedly as the free fatty acid (FFA) concentration of the medium was increased. Incorporation into lipids and conversion to C14O2 proceeded linearly with time over 60 min. The incorporation of glycerol-1,3-C14 into neutral lipids also increased as the FFA concentration of the medium was increased but incorporation into phospholipids was unchanged. It is concluded that high FFA concentrations cause a true increase in rate of neutral lipid synthesis by liver slices. The associated increase in incorporation of labeled palmitate into phospholipids most likely reflects the higher specific radioactivity of the precursor pool of FFA and/or an exchange reaction rather than a true increase in net synthesis. A method for recovering tissue FFA quantitatively is described. Normal liver was found to contain 0.40–0.87 µEq FFA/g wet wt. The composition of this tissue FFA fraction is presented.