Stereochemical course of intestinal absorption and transport of mustard-seed oil triacylglycerols in the rat.

Male rats with thoracic duct cannulae were intubated with mustard-seed oil or the corresponding fatty acid methyl esters and the lymph was collected over 0-24 h. The chylomicron and very low density lipoprotein fractions were obtained by conventional ultracentrifugation. The triacylglycerols and glycerophospholipids were isolated and the positional distribution and molecular association of fatty acids were determined by stereospecific and chromatographic methods. The oleic, linoleic, and linolenic acids were recovered in the lymph in the proportion in which they occurred in the fat fed, while eicosenoic, erucic, and lignoceric acids were rejected to about the same extent by the two pathways of intestinal triacylglycerol biosynthesis. It is shown that the lymph triacylglycerols arising via the monoacylglycerol or the phosphatidic acid pathway possess structures that are closely similar to each other and to that of the original mustard-seed oil. It is proposed that this is a result of comparable fatty acid and positional specificity of the acyltransferases associated with the acylglycerol synthesis in the animal and plant tissues and the wide range of fatty acid chain lengths in the mustard-seed oil.