The determination of the specific activity of picomolar amounts of long-chain acylcarnitine esters

✍ Scribed by Richard Odessey; Kenneth V. Chace

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 431 KB
• Volume: 122
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-2697
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-2697(82)90248-2

✦ Synopsis

Measurement of the specific activity of cellular pools of long-chain acylcarnitines is complicated by interference of other labeled cellular lipids, especially phosphatidylcholine and sphingomyelin. To overcome these problems the lipid extract from rabbit aorta labeled with [ l-'4C]palmitate was treated with phospholipase C. Upon two-dimensional thin-layer chromatography, the long-chain acylcarnitines could be isolated in an area free of interfering. radioactivity. Mobility of long-chain carnitines was inversely proportional to the fatty acid chain length. The amount of long-chain acylcarnitine was quantified from their carnitine content after alkaline hydrolysis using carnitine acetyltransferase.