The labelling of pulmonary surfactant phosphatidylcholine in 19-31-days-old lambs

The labelling of surfactant phosphatidylcholine and disaturated phosphatidylcholine was studied in 19-31-days-old lambs. Following the placement of small bore tracheal catheters, the animals were given radioactively labelled palmitic acid and/or choline by intravenous injection and multiple samples were recovered from the distal airways of each animal via a small catheter. The specific activities of the phosphatidylcholine and/or disaturated phosphatidylcholine were measured in these samples of surfactant. The labelled phospholipids accumulated in the samples of surfactant in a linear fashion; the mean time required to reach maximal specific activities in phosphatidylcholine and saturated phosphatidylcholine with either palmitic acid or choline as precursor was 28 h. Subsequently the specific activities of the labelled phospholipids from the surfactant samples decreased semi-logarithmically. The mean t1/2 for phosphatidylcholine and disaturated phosphatidylcholine labelled with radioactive palmitic acid was 35 h. The saturated phosphatidylcholine labelled with radioactive choline had a t1/2 of 251 h. The results demonstrate that surfactant labelling studies can be done by multiple sampling of single large animals.