Photoactivable sphingosine as a tool to study membrane microenviroments in cultured cells

Human fi broblasts from normal subjects and Niemann-Pick A (NPA) disease patients were fed with two labeled metabolic precursors of sphingomyelin (SM), [3 H] choline and photoactivable sphingosine, that entered into the biosynthetic pathway allowing the synthesis of radioactive phosphatidylcholine and SM, and of radioactive and photoactivable SM ([3 H]SM-N 3). Detergent resistant membrane (DRM) fractions prepared from normal and NPA fi-broblasts resulted as highly enriched in [3 H]SM-N 3. However, lipid and protein analysis showed strong differences between the two cell types. After cross-linking, different patterns of SM-protein complexes were found, mainly associated with the detergent soluble fraction of the gradient containing most cell proteins. After cell surface biotinylation, DRMs were immunoprecipitated using streptavidin. In conditions that maintain the integrity of domain, SM-protein complexes were detectable only in normal fi broblasts, whereas disrupting the membrane organization, these complexes were not recovered in the immunoprecipitate, suggesting that they involve proteins belonging to the inner membrane layer. These data suggest that differences in lipid and protein compositions of these cell lines determine specifi c lipid-protein interactions and different clustering within plasma membrane. In addition, our experiments show that photoactivable sphingolipids metabolically synthesized in cells can be used to study sphingolipid protein environments and sphingolipid-protein interactions. Copyright