Comparative study on ganglioside compositions of various rabbit tissues. Tissue-specificity in ganglioside molecular...

Ganglioside compositions of various organs of rabbit (NIBS strain, male, 10 months old) were studied. Organs examined contained lipid-bound sialic acid at various concentrations but the amounts in extraneural tissues were less than one-fifth of that in brain. The gangliosides of various tissues were analyzed by ganglioside-mapping and by isolating individual components and determining their structures chemically or enzymatically. According to their backbone asialocarbohydrate chain, the major gangliosides of various tissues were classified into three groups: (1) lactose and ganglio-N-triose (lung, stomach, liver, intestine, kidney, testis and muscle); (2) ganglio-N-tetraose (brain); (3) lacto-N-neotetraose (thymus). 70% of all thymus gangliosides had a lacto-N-neotetraose backbone, which was tissue-specific. In marked contrast to the case in other tissues, in thymus N-glycoloylneuraminic acid constituted 90% of the total lipid-bound sialic acid, and all molecular species of thymus gangliosides contained N-glycoloylneuraminic acid. Palmitic acid was a major fatty acid of thymus gangliosides. Distinct differences were found in the fatty acid compositions of gangliosides with longer carbohydrate chains in various tissues.