Phosphatidylethanolamine is the donor of the terminal phosphoethanolamine group in trypanosome glycosylphosphatidylinositols. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • A variety of eukaryotic cell surface proteins, including the variant surface glycoproteins of African trypanosomes, rely on a covalently attached lipid, glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI), for membrane attachment. GPI anchors are synthesized in the endoplasmic reticulum by stepwise glycosylation of phosphatidylinositol (via UDP-GlcNAc and dolichol-P-mannose) followed by the addition of phosphoethanolamine. The experiments described in this paper are aimed at identifying the biosynthetic origin of the terminal phosphoethanolamine group. We show that trypanosome GPIs can be labelled via CDP-[3H]ethanolamine or [beta-32P]CDP-ethanolamine in a cell-free system, indicating that phosphoethanolamine is acquired en bloc. In pulse-chase experiments with CDP-[3H]ethanolamine we show that the GPI phosphoethanolamine is not derived directly from CDP-ethanolamine, but instead from a relatively stable metabolite, such as phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), generated from CDP-ethanolamine in the cell-free system. To test the possibility that PE is the immediate donor of the GPI phosphoethanolamine moiety, we describe metabolic labelling experiments with [3H]serine and show that GPIs can be labelled in the absence of detectable radiolabelled CDP-ethanolamine, presumably via [3H]PE generated from [3H]phosphatidylserine (PS). The data support the proposal that the terminal phosphoethanolamine group in trypanosome GPIs is derived from PE.

publication date

  • May 1, 1993

Research

keywords

  • Ethanolamines
  • Glycosylphosphatidylinositols
  • Phosphatidylethanolamines
  • Trypanosoma brucei brucei

Identity

PubMed Central ID

  • PMC413411

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 0027263411

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1002/j.1460-2075.1993.tb05839.x

PubMed ID

  • 8491183

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 12

issue

  • 5