A developmental study of fatty acyl group contents in the peripheral nervous system of normal and trembler mice.

We quantitated the content of the fatty acyl groups of sciatic nerves from normal and Trembler mice between the postnatal ages of 5 and 60 d. Palmitoyl, stearoyl, and unsaturated 18-carbon groups increased normally in Trembler nerves during the first 9 d, after which their levels were notably lower than those observed for the normal littermates. In good agreement, the synthesis of palmitic acid by the fatty acid synthetase was normal in the PNS of 9-d-old Trembler mice. "Myelin-specific" saturated very long chain fatty acyl groups (VLCFAG) were deficient at all ages studied, the deficiency increasing from about 2.5-fold at 5 d, to 26-fold at 60 d, compared to the maximal 3- to 4-fold decrease observed for the more ubiquitous shorter chains. The results presented in this paper suggest that the highly abnormal VLCFAG content of the mutant nerves cannot be accounted for by an abnormal fatty acid synthetase activity. For the fatty acyl chains with 18 carbon atoms, however, the deficiency observed after 9 d of age can be almost entirely explained by the diminished levels of palmitic acid. The relatively late occurrence of the palmitic acid deficiency compared with that of the VLCFAG and the normal palmitate synthetase activity observed in young mutant mice indicates that the former is an indirect consequence of the Trembler mutation.