Effects of defined synthetic phospholipids on glycosylation processes. Modifications of membrane-bound N-acetylglucosaminyl-transferase and solubilized sialyl-transferase activities.

In this paper, we study effects of phosphatidylcholine synthetic derivatives on two different glycosyltransferasic systems, a membranous mitochondrial N-acetylglucosaminyl-transferase and a solubilized microsomal sialyl-transferase. From all our results, we proved the strong inhibitory effect of lysophosphatidylcholines in these glycosylation processes. We investigated then the relationship between this inhibitory effect and the chemical structure of the studied phospholipids. From this work, it became obvious that the most important inhibitory effect is obtained with a molecule containing a long aliphatic side chain in sn-1 of glycerol, a carbon atom devoid of any large group in sn-2 and an hydrophilic part in sn-3 (specially choline).