| Literature DB >> 22231783 |
Liana C Silva1, Oshrit Ben David2, Yael Pewzner-Jung2, Elad L Laviad2, Johnny Stiban2, Sibali Bandyopadhyay3, Alfred H Merrill3, Manuel Prieto4, Anthony H Futerman2.
Abstract
Little is known about the effects of altering sphingolipid (SL) acyl chain structure and composition on the biophysical properties of biological membranes. We explored the biophysical consequences of depleting very long acyl chain (VLC) SLs in membranes prepared from lipid fractions isolated from a ceramide synthase 2 (CerS2)-null mouse, which is unable to synthesize C22-C24 ceramides. We demonstrate that ablation of CerS2 has different effects on liver and brain, causing a significant alteration in the fluidity of the membrane and affecting the type and/or extent of the phases present in the membrane. These changes are a consequence of the depletion of VLC and unsaturated SLs, which occurs to a different extent in liver and brain. In addition, ablation of CerS2 causes changes in intrinsic membrane curvature, leading to strong morphological alterations that promote vesicle adhesion, membrane fusion, and tubule formation. Together, these results show that depletion of VLC-SLs strongly affects membrane biophysical properties, which may compromise cellular processes that critically depend on membrane structure, such as trafficking and sorting.Entities:
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Year: 2012 PMID： 22231783 PMCID： PMC3276466 DOI： 10.1194/jlr.M022715
Source DB: PubMed Journal: J Lipid Res ISSN： 0022-2275 Impact factor: 5.922