Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Biochemistry of the Sphingolipids

1961; Elsevier BV; Volume: 236; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0021-9258(18)64105-5

1083-351X

Herbert E. Carter, R.A. Hendry, Satoshi Nojima, N. Ž. Stanaćev, K Ohno,

Lysosomal Storage Disorders Research

Since the initial work of Bamberger and Lansiedel in 1905 (3), numerous attempts have been made to isolate cerebrosides from such plant materials as seeds (4)) fungi ( 58), and oak wood (9).The crude materials obtained were not well characterized and indeed doubt exists as to whether these preparations actually contained any cerebroside.Recently, we reported evidence (10) for the presence of a minor cerebrosidelike constituent of the glycolipid fraction of wheat flour lipid.In view of the uncertainty as to the existence of cerebrosides in plants, it seemed of interest to isolate and further characterize this material.The work presented in this communication establishes the presence in wheat flour of a mixture of cerebrosides derived from at least three different long chain bases, one of which has not been detected previously.Cerebroside fractions were readily obtained from crude wheat flour glycolipid or from purified galactosyl-glycerol lipid fractions by an alkaline hydrolysis to destroy ester groups.These crude fractions on further purification yielded material analyzing correctly for a cerebroside and giving very similar infrared spectra.Acid hydrolysis of the purified cerebroside fraction gave glucose, a mixture of fatty acids of which the main constituent was a-hydroxystearic acid, and a long chain base fraction.These results establish the presence in wheat flour lipids of glucocerebroside(s).In previous work with sphingolipids, we have found sphingosine and dihydrosphingosine to be present in animal but not in plant tissues; whereas phytosphingosine, the major constituent of plant sphingolipids, was not detected in animal lipids.It therefore seemed likely that the wheat cerebroside would have structure I.