Gangliosides of long sleep and short sleep mouse cerebellum and hippocampus and cerebellar and whole brain synaptosomal plasma membranes.

Gangliosides appear to be factors in CNS membrane responses to ethanol. Responses of membranes to ethanol might be influenced by the membrane concentration of gangliosides, the distribution of ganglioside molecular species, or the surface orientation of gangliosides at the plasma membrane surface. To determine the importance of these influences to the acute effect of ethanol, we have chosen to study them in long sleep (LS) and short sleep (SS) mice. This report presents our findings on the composition of gangliosides from LS and SS mouse cerebellum and hippocampus, the composition of gangliosides from synaptosomal plasma membranes (SPM) of LS and SS mice, and the molecular species of cerebellar gangliosides from the two lines. It has been found that GM1 is elevated in the cerebellum and in cerebellar SPM of LS mice compared to SS mice, but that there is no difference between the GM1 concentration in the whole hippocampus of the two lines. Further, there are no differences in the molecular species of the cerebellar gangliosides of LS and SS mice.