Lipids described

An alternative approach for especially assessing lipid concentration is described in Ref. 34 and makes use of the description of the muscular lipid signals (L) as a convolution between the MFD of the lipid compartments and a characteristic line pattern of lipids describing only chemical shift modulations (A). 

Triacylglycerols and the ether lipids described in the previous section are classified as neutral lipids. Other neutral lipids are alcohols, waxes, aldehydes, and hydrocarbons derived from fatty acids. These sometimes have specific biological functions. For example, fatty aldehydes are important in the bioluminescence of bacteria (Eq. 23-47). 

Ether phospholipids, analogous to the ether lipids described in Section 2, are also widely distributed. Tire alkenyl ether analogs of phosphatidylcholine (Fig. 8-2) are called plasmalogens.17 In neutrophils the 1-O-alkyl ethers contain the major share of the cell s arachidonic acid, which is esterified in the 2 position.1819... 

Most cationic lipids described in the literature are synthesised by solution synthesis [36-39]. Depending upon the complexity of the structure, the synthetic routes vary from just one or two chemical steps, as in the case of DOTMA (1) and DC-Choi (3), to longer convergent synthesis, as for DOGS (5) (these three compounds being the earliest examples of cationic lipids prepared for transfection purposes [41, 68, 69]) (see Fig. 2). 

List five general classes of compound that are collectively known as lipids. Describe the essential differences between (a) plasmalogens and sphingomyelins and (b) cerebrosides, sulphatides and gangliosides. 

For cationic lipid/DNA charge ratio up to 1, small particles were obtained but DNA was not compacted as shown by the high level of fluorescence obtained. Between 1 and 4-6 nmol cationic lipid/pg DNA (which in the case of the cationic lipids described here is also equivalent to charge ratio), large aggregated particles were observed with low fluorescence indicating compaction of DNA. 

Most of the complex lipides are diesters of orthophosphoric acid. Those not belonging to this category will be described with those that do. The fact that the complex lipides described here are extremely widely distributed in the biosphere, confers upon them the status of fundamental cellular constituents. 

The lipids described in sections 6.2.2 and 6.2.3 were based on a glycerol backbone. However, another important group of acyl lipids have sphingosine-based structures. Both glycolipids and phospholipids are found, with some compounds capable of dual classification, i.e. phospholipids which contain sugar residues. 

Absorption spectroscopy provides a means to study particular details about a monolayer. Transmission spectroscopy is difficult because the film, which is thin, absorbs little. Gaines [1] describes multiple-pass procedures for overcoming this problem. Reflection spectroscopy in the UV-visible range has been reported for lipid monolayers [150,151] and in the IR range for oleic acid [152]. 

An essential component of cell membranes are the lipids, lecithins, or phosphatidylcholines (PC). The typical ir-a behavior shown in Fig. XV-6 is similar to that for the simple fatty-acid monolayers (see Fig. IV-16) and has been modeled theoretically [36]. Branched hydrocarbons tails tend to expand the mono-layer [38], but generally the phase behavior is described by a fluid-gel transition at the plateau [39] and a semicrystalline phase at low a. As illustrated in Fig. XV-7, the areas of the dense phase may initially be highly branched, but they anneal to a circular shape on recompression [40]. The theoretical evaluation of these shape transitions is discussed in Section IV-4F. 

Interactions between macromolecules (protems, lipids, DNA,.. . ) or biological structures (e.g. membranes) are considerably more complex than the interactions described m the two preceding paragraphs. The sum of all biological mteractions at the molecular level is the basis of the complex mechanisms of life. In addition to computer simulations, direct force measurements [98], especially the surface forces apparatus, represent an invaluable tool to help understand the molecular interactions in biological systems. 

Another important class of materials which can be successfiilly described by mesoscopic and contimiiim models are amphiphilic systems. Amphiphilic molecules consist of two distinct entities that like different enviromnents. Lipid molecules, for instance, comprise a polar head that likes an aqueous enviromnent and one or two hydrocarbon tails that are strongly hydrophobic. Since the two entities are chemically joined together they cannot separate into macroscopically large phases. If these amphiphiles are added to a binary mixture (say, water and oil) they greatly promote the dispersion of one component into the other. At low amphiphile... 

In special cases (as in colloidal solutions) some particles can be considered as essential and other particles as irrelevant , but in most cases the essential space will itself consist of collective degrees of freedom. A reaction coordinate for a chemical reaction is an example where not a particle, but some function of the distance between atoms is considered. In a simulation of the permeability of a lipid bilayer membrane for water [132] the reaction coordinate was taken as the distance, in the direction perpendicular to the bilayer, between the center of mass of a water molecule and the center of mass of the rest of the system. In proteins (see below) a few collective degrees of freedom involving all atoms of the molecule, describe almost all the... 

The summation runs over all carbon atoms in the chain. is the angle between the bilayei normal and the molecular axis, as discussed above. is the field strength this may be parametrised to reproduce appropriate experimental data such as the deuterium NMR order parameters or it may be obtained by a self-consistent protocol, as described below. In his work on lipid bilayers Marcelja used a slightly different expression for i jjisp which... 

In principle, mesoscale methods can provide a means for connecting one type of simulation to another. For example, a molecular simulation can be used to describe a lipid. One can then derive the parameters for a lipid-lipid potential. These parameters can then be used in a simulation that combines lipids to form a membrane, which, in turn, can be used to compute parameters describing a membrane as a flexible sheet. Such parameters could be used for a simulation with many cells in order to obtain parameters that describe an organ, which could be used for a whole-body biological simulation. Each step, in theory, could be modeled in a different way using parameters derived not from experiment but from a more low-level form of simulation. This situation has not yet been realized, but it is representative of one trend in computational technique development. 

Trichloro- and 2,2,2-tribromoethoxycarbonyl (Tceoc and Tbeoc) protecting groups are introduced with the commercially available 2,2,2-trihaloethyl chloroformates. These derivatives are stable towards CrOj and acids, but can smoothly be cleaved by reduction with zinc in acetic acid at 20 °C to yield 1,1-dihaloethene and CO. Several examples in lipid (F.R. Pfeiffer, 1968, 1970) and nucleotide syntheses (A.F. Cook, 1968) have been described. 

Two physically reasonable but quite different models have been used to describe the internal motions of lipid molecules observed by neutron scattering. In the first the protons are assumed to undergo diffusion in a sphere [63]. The radius of the sphere is allowed to be different for different protons. Although the results do not seem to be sensitive to the details of the variation in the sphere radii, it is necessary to have a range of sphere volumes, with the largest volume for methylene groups near the ends of the hydrocarbon chains in the middle of the bilayer and the smallest for the methylenes at the tops of the chains, closest to the bilayer surface. This is consistent with the behavior of the carbon-deuterium order parameters,. S cd, measured by deuterium NMR ... 

When Mitchell first described his chemiosmotic hypothesis in 1961, little evidence existed to support it, and it was met with considerable skepticism by the scientific community. Eventually, however, considerable evidence accumulated to support this model. It is now clear that the electron transport chain generates a proton gradient, and careful measurements have shown that ATP is synthesized when a pH gradient is applied to mitochondria that cannot carry out electron transport. Even more relevant is a simple but crucial experiment reported in 1974 by Efraim Racker and Walther Stoeckenius, which provided specific confirmation of the Mitchell hypothesis. In this experiment, the bovine mitochondrial ATP synthasereconstituted in simple lipid vesicles with bac-teriorhodopsin, a light-driven proton pump from Halobaeterium halobium. As shown in Eigure 21.28, upon illumination, bacteriorhodopsin pumped protons... 

We turn now to the biosynthesis of lipid structures. We begin with a discussion of the biosynthesis of fatty acids, stressing the basic pathways, additional means of elongation, mechanisms for the introduction of double bonds, and regulation of fatty acid synthesis. Sections then follow on the biosynthesis of glyc-erophospholipids, sphingolipids, eicosanoids, and cholesterol. The transport of lipids through the body in lipoprotein complexes is described, and the chapter closes with discussions of the biosynthesis of bile salts and steroid hormones. 

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