Correlation of fatty acyl composition of mitochondrial and microsomal phospholipid with growth rate of rat hepatomas

This paper presents fatty acyl compositions of phospholipids derived from mitochondria and microsomes isolated from two Morris hepatomas, one with slow (9618A) and another with intermediate (7794A) growth rate, and from corresponding host livers. These were compared with previous data from our laboratory for the fast-growing Morris hepatoma 7777. In this group of three hepatomas of widely differing growth rate and differentiation, the faster the growth rate of the tumor, the larger the sum of the contents of 16:1, 18:1, and 18:2 and the smaller the sum of the contents of all polyunsaturated fatty acids with four or more double bonds per molecule. The former sum was generally higher and the polyunsaturate content lower in hepatoma organelles than in corresponding host liver organelles. The 18:0/18:1 ratio observed in hepatoma organelles was always significantly less than that in host or control liver organelles.