In vitro acylation of rat brain myelin proteolipid protein.

The incorporation of fatty acid into myelin proteolipid protein (PLP) was studied by incubating brain slices from 17-day-old rats with [9,10-3H]palmitic acid. Myelin proteins were analyzed by gel electrophoresis. As in vivo (Agrawal, H. C., Randle, C. L., and Agrawal, D. (1982) J. Biol. Chem. 257, 4588-4592) most of the radioactivity co-migrated with PLP, with radioactivity also appearing in the regions of the DM-20 and Wolfgram proteins. Treatment of myelin proteins or purified PLP with 1 M hydroxylamine released most of the radioactivity, indicating that [3H]palmitic acid was covalently bound by ester linkage to the proteins. Cleavage of PLP with methanolic NaOH and examination of the released fatty acids by thin layer chromatography showed radioactivity associated with the methyl esters of palmitate, stearate, and oleate (76, 23, and 1%, respectively). A linear increase in radioactivity from [3H]palmitic acid was observed in PLP in both myelin and myelin-like fractions, while appearance of [14C]glycine-labeled PLP showed a lag of 45-60 minutes. These results indicate that lipid is added to PLP in the myelin and myelin-like membranes, or immediately prior to the appearance of PLP in these fractions. For both precursors, the specific activity of PLP was greater in the myelin-like fraction than in myelin, indicating that the myelin-like fraction may contain a precursor pool of PLP for myelin.