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PubMed1981

Plasma lipids in tropical sprue.

Previous studies indicated that many patients with tropical sprue in southern India have triglyceride accumulation within the cells of the intestinal mucosa. This could be due to essential fatty acid deficiency as a result of steatorrhea in subjects on a diet normally low in linoleic acid. Plasma lipids have, therefore, been studied in patients with tropical sprue and the results compared to values observed in healthy controls. The low intake of linoleic acid was found to be adequate to maintain normal levels of arachidonic acid and to repress the formation of 5,8,11-eicosatrienoic acid in rural controls. Patients with tropical sprue had decreased levels of plasma linoleic acid, raised monoenoic fatty acids and the appearance of 5,8,11-eicosatrienoic acid in the lecithin fraction. All of these observations indicate essential fatty acid depletion although unequivocal evidence of essential fatty acid deficiency was not present in any of the patients. The degree of essential fatty acid depletion observed is unlikely to be the cause of the mucosal accumulation of triglyceride in tropical sprue.

Cholesterol↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Peptide transport across the animal cell plasma membrane: recent developments.

Transfer of intact peptides across the plasma membrane of animal cells, especially in the small intestine and the kidney, is a well established phenomenon. This process plays an important role in the maintenance of protein nutrition. Evidence is accumulating which suggests that the process may also have a great potential for pharmacological and clinical applications. It is therefore important to understand various aspects of peptide transport such as its function, chemical nature of the transport protein and its gene, the operational mechanisms and their regulation, and the relevance of the transport system to health and disease. Recent years have witnessed considerable progress in the field. The driving force for the transport system has been identified as the proton motive force which makes the system unique and distinct from the majority of solute transport systems in animal cells which are driven by a sodium motive force. A great deal is now known on the chemical nature of the active site. The protein responsible for the transport process in the small intestine has been purified and characterized. The system has been successfully expressed in its functional form in Xenopus laevis oocytes by microinjection into the oocytes of poly(A)+ mRNA isolated from intestinal mucosal cells. There is no doubt that the coming years will bring even more exciting information on the transport system, especially in areas such as hormonal regulation, clinical applicability and cloning, and characterization of the gene encoding the transport system.

Amino Acid Sequence↗