The role of lipid metabolism has gained particular interest in prostate cancer research. A large body of literature has outlined the unique upregulation of de novo lipid synthesis in prostate cancer. Concordant with this lipogenic phenotype is a metabolic shift, in which cancer cells use alternative enzymes and pathways to facilitate the production of fatty acids. These newly synthesized lipids...

Aberrant lipid metabolism is an established hallmark of cancer cells. In particular, ether lipid levels have been shown to be elevated in tumors, but their specific function in cancer remains elusive. We show here that the metabolic enzyme alkylglyceronephosphate synthase (AGPS), a critical step in the synthesis of ether lipids, is up-regulated across multiple types of aggressive human cancer c...

Introduction The main differences between lipids and other biomolecules (carbohydrates, proteins and nucleic acids) are their solubility in non-polar solvents and structure of long hydrocarbon chains. Based on the physical and chemical properties, eukaryotic and prokaryotic lipids are grouped under eight categories, each of which contains distinct classes, subclasses, subgroups and subsets of l...

Advances in mass spectrometry (MS) have made comprehensive lipidomics analysis of complex tissues relatively commonplace. These compositional analyses, although able to resolve hundreds of molecular species of lipids in single extracts, lose the original cellular context from which these lipids are derived. Recently, high-resolution MS of individual lipid droplets from seed tissues indicated or...

This work is a review on HPTLC contribution to lipid analysis in complex matrices, the period from 2010 now, lapse of time where hyphenation with other techniques, especially Mass Spectrometry, has experienced an important growth. Scanning densitometry (SD)-UV/FL separated lipids, as core detection and centerpiece for hyphenation, its coupling MS using soft ionization techniques (ESI, APCI, MAL...

Isotopic compositions of carbon-bound hydrogen in individual compounds from eight different organisms were measured using isotope-ratio-monitoring gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. This technique is capable of measuring D/H ratios at natural abundance in individual lipids yielding as little as 20 nmol of H2, and is applicable to a wide range of compounds including hydrocarbons, sterols, and...

The formation of cell envelope components of Bifidobacterium bifidum subsp. pennsylvanicus was studied by measuring the incorporation of [(3)H]glycine, (14)C-labeled fatty acids, and N-benzoyl-[(14)C]glucosamine into the membrane protein, membrane lipids, and cell wall peptidoglycan, respectively. Inhibition of peptidoglycan synthesis by antibiotics (penicillin G, vancomycin, d-cycloserine, and...

In order to assess the potential importance of different cellular binding sites for the adverse effects of aminoglycosides (i.e. oto- and nephrotoxicity) the binding of neomycin and calcium to phospholipids and other anionic cell constituents was assayed in vitro. Phospholipids demonstrated binding affinities that strongly favored neomycin (Km, 10 to 100 microM) over calcium (Km, 300 to 1,120 m...

Type 2 diabetes is associated with significantly accelerated rates of macrovascular complications such as atherosclerosis. Emerging evidence now indicates that atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease and that certain inflammatory markers may be key predictors of diabetic atherosclerosis. Proinflammatory cytokines and cellular adhesion molecules expressed by vascular and blood cells during st...

Lysosomal phospholipases play a critical role for degradation of cellular membranes after their lysosomal segregation. We investigated the regulation of lysosomal phospholipase A1 by cholesterol, phosphatidylethanolamine, and negatively-charged lipids in correlation with changes of biophysical properties of the membranes induced by these lipids. Lysosomal phospholipase A1 activity was determine...