Phosphatidylethanolamine in liver mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum: molecular species distribution and turnover

Phosphatidylethanolamine from mitochondria and microsomes of guinea pig liver was separated by thin-layer chromatography into eight different classes differing in degree of unsaturation. The fatty acid compositions and molar proportions of each class isolated from microsomes were very similar to the corresponding class in mitochondria. In both organelles about half of the total was dienoic species while tetraenes comprised approximately 20%. Stearic acid was the major saturated fatty acid and in each membrane a greater selectivity for stearate over palmitate was found in each sub-class of phosphatidylcholine. Following the intraperitoneal injection of [2 minus-3 H]glycerol, the labelling of each molecular class of phosphatidylethanolamine showed very similar progressions in microsomes and mitochondria over a 3 h interval. In both organelles the highest relative specific activity was attained by penta-plus hexaenoic classes, while the large dienoic class had the lowest relative activity, which, however, increased with time. Analysis of the dienoic class of phosphatidyl-ethanolamine from whole liver showed it to be constituted by a rapidly turning over palmitoyl-linoleoyl fraction and a slowly labelled stearoyl-linoleoyl fraction, a pattern also exhibited by dienoic phosphatidylcholines. The similarities in profile of molecular classes of phosphatidylethanolamine and in the kinetics of labelling in vivo point to a close metabolic relation between the lipids of both organelles, suggestive of a transfer of different molecular classes at comparable rates from the endoplasmic reticulum, the site of synthesis, to the mitochondria. This is consistent with numerous other studies in vitro that have demonstrated inter-organelle exchange of lipids.