A Unique Phospholipid Organization in Bovine Erythrocyte Membranes

Ruminant erythrocytes are remarkable for their choline-phospholipid anomalies; namely, low or absent phosphatidylcholine (PC) along with high sphingomyelin levels. Here, we report another anomaly in bovine erythrocytes that affects aminophospholipids: phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) shows an extreme a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 98; no. 14; pp. 7736 - 7741
Main Authors Florin-Christensen, J., Suarez, C. E., Florin-Christensen, M., Wainszelbaum, M., Brown, W. C., McElwain, T. F., Palmer, G. H.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 03.07.2001
National Acad Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences
Subjects
Animals
Bee venoms
Biological Sciences
Cattle
Chemical suspensions
Enzymes
Erythrocyte membrane
Erythrocyte Membrane - chemistry
Erythrocytes
Fatty acids
Lipids
Membranes
Phospholipids
Phospholipids - chemistry
Reagents
Ruminants
Ungulates
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Ruminant erythrocytes are remarkable for their choline-phospholipid anomalies; namely, low or absent phosphatidylcholine (PC) along with high sphingomyelin levels. Here, we report another anomaly in bovine erythrocytes that affects aminophospholipids: phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) shows an extreme asymmetry, with only 2% of the total present in the outer leaflet. Furthermore, we found that phospholipase A2, an enzyme located on the external surface of the erythrocytes, shows higher activity against PC than against PE. In addition, we observed that acylation of PE is by far the most important biosynthetic event in this system. We propose that deacylation of PE and PC by phospholipase A2to generate lysocompounds, followed by selective reacylation of lyso-PE in the inner leaflet, can account for the compositional and architectural peculiarities of bovine erythrocyte membranes.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
Edited by Clarence A. Ryan, Jr., Washington State University, Pullman, WA, and approved April 25, 2001
To whom reprint requests should be addressed. E-mail: ces@vetmed.wsu.edu.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.131580998