Age-related changes of the ganglioside long-chain base composition in rat cerebellum.

ABSTRACT

The ganglioside mixture from the cerebellum of young, 6 month old and two years old rats, was fractionated by reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography, each ganglioside homogeneous in the oligosaccharide chain as well as in the long-chain base being subsequently quantified. Two long-chain bases, LCB, were components of the five major gangliosides GM1, GD1a, GD1b, GT1b and GQ1b, these being the C181 LCB and C201 LCB. The content of C201 ganglioside molecular species was lower than that of the C181 one. In very young animals, day 8, the C201 ganglioside species represented about 8% of the total ganglioside content, then they progressively increased and reached, at 2 years, about 42% of the total. C181 GD1a and C181 GT1b, were the major species in young animals and reached their highest content at day 29, being 1.45 and 1.28 nmol/mg protein, respectively. The content of these two species decreased in adult and old animals and at two years it was 0.71 and 0.82 nmol/mg protein, respectively.