Ether-linked lipids of rat developing and adult epididymis

ORESTI, G.M.; LUQUEZ, J.M.; AVELDAÑO, M.I.; SANTIAGO VALTIERRA, F.X.; FURLAND, N.E.

Córdoba

Congreso; LII Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2016

Sociedad Argentina de Investigacion en Bioquimica y Biologia Molecular

In mammalian tissues, glycerophospholipids (GPL) and tri-glycerides (TG) occur in three sublcasses, depending on whether the chain at the sn-1 position of the glycerol backbone is a fatty acid, a fatty alcohol, or a fatty aldehyde. This study focused on the ether-linked (EL) subclasses of GPL and TG, following their changes during postnatal development in rat epididymis and, in the adult, their distribution among epididymal caput, corpus and cauda regions. At postnatal day 30, in a still scarcely differentiated epithelium lacking spermatozoa, the epididymis already contained plasmanyl- and plasmenyl-ethanolamine (Pls-Et) with 22:4n-9 (DTA), the DTA-containing plasmenyl-choline (Pls-Cho) increasing with development and the presence of sperm. In the adult tissue, the DTA-Pls-Et concentration per mg protein was highest in the corpus and higher than that of DTA-Pls-Cho in the three epididymal regions, suggesting a precursor-product relationship. The latter subclass is in turn the one to increase the most in rat spermatozoa as they mature. The epididymal EL-TG were even richer in DTA than the GPL, the 1-alkyl- predominating over the 1-alk-enyl- subclass at all ages, their concentration being highest in the adult corpus. These results correlated well with the expression (mRNA) of a key peroxisomal enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of these lipids, alkylglycerone phosphate synthase.