The assembly of lipid-linked oligosaccharides in plant and animal membranes

Membrane preparations from growing regions of pea stems and actively-dividing mouse L-cells form lipid-linked saccharides from GDP-mannose and UDP-N-acetylglucosamine. These lipids have properties which are consistent with those of mono- and di-phosphoryl polyisoprenyl derivatives. In experiments using plant membranes, the monophosphoryl derivative labeled with GDP-(14C) mannose contains mannose only, while the diphosphoryl derivative labeled with the same nucleotide sugar is heterogeneous, containing oligosaccharides corresponding to mannosaccharides of 5, 7, and 9--12 residues. Only the diphosphoryl polyisoprenyl derivatives are labeled with UDP-(14C)glucosamine and these contain predominantly chitobiose and N-acetylglucosamine itself. Unlabeled GDP-mannose added after UDP-N-acetyl-(14C)glucosamine results in the formation of higher lipid-linked oligosaccharides which are apparently the same as those which are labeled with GDP-(14C)mannose alone. Incubation of the membranes with GDP-(14C)mannose in the presence of Mn2+, unlabeled UDP-glucose or unlabeled UDP-N-acetylglucosamine results in marked changes in the accumulation of both the polyisoprenyl monophosphoryl mannose and polyisoprenyl diphosphoryl oligosaccharides. Animal cell membranes synthesise lipid-linked oligosaccharides when incubated with UDP-N-acetylglucosamine and GDP-mannose. These oligosaccharides are similar in size to those synthesised by the plant membranes but their formation is more efficient. The potential roles of these compounds in glycoprotein biosynthesis in both plant and animal tissues is discussed.