Fatty‐Acid Biosynthesis

Abstract
The relationship between the two elongation syntheses of fatty acids, one present in microsomes and the other in mitochondria, and the system for synthesizing palmitate de novo has been studied in rat liver. The results indicate that microsomes are much more active than mitochondria in elongating and/or desaturating fatty acids synthesized by cytoplasmic system. Fatty acids synthesized by cell sap in the presence of added microsomes are found principally esterified into phospholipids, this indicates that these compounds in the microsomal fraction are actively deacylated and reacylated. ATP is required both for chain elongation and for the esterification of newly synthesized fatty acids. Evidence has been obtained that acyl groups are elongated and/or esterified into complex lipids as acyl‐CoA and not as acyl‐ACP. The high activity of palmityl thioesterase in the cell sap with respect to the other subcellular fractions points out the importance of this enzyme in the fatty acid synthesis de novo.

This publication has 53 references indexed in Scilit: