Affiliation:
1. Department of Clinical Microbiology, The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel
Abstract
Essentially all of the lipids of
Mycoplasma hominis
(200 μg/mg of cell protein) were found to be located in the cell membrane. Over one-half were neutral lipids incorporated from the growth medium and consisting of 43% free cholesterol, 19% esterified cholesterol, 23% triglycerides, 10% free fatty acids, and small amounts of di- and monoglycerides. The polar lipids accounting for about 40% of the total were synthesized by the organisms. Phosphatidylglycerol was the predominant lipid of this fraction. The minor components, tentatively identified as lysophosphatidylglycerol and phosphatidic acid, seem to represent breakdown products of phosphatidylglycerol. No glycolipids were detected. Being unable to synthesize long-chain fatty acids,
M. hominis
utilized the fatty acids of the growth medium for polar lipid synthesis, preferentially the saturated ones, so that the polar lipids had highly saturated hydrocarbon chains. It is proposed that the large take up of unsaturated neutral lipids and cholesterol from the medium offsets the marked condensing effect of the saturated polar lipids, although electron paramagnetic resonance spectrometry of spin-labeled fatty acids incorporated into the
M. hominis
membrane indicated that the lipid region is still more rigid than that of the
Acholeplasma laidlawii
membrane.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Molecular Biology,Microbiology
Cited by
53 articles.
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