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Life, death and membrane bilayers

A. J. Hulbert

Metabolic Research Centre and Department of Biological Science, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia (e-mail: hulbert{at}uow.edu.au)

View larger version (29K): [in a new window]   Fig. 1. Diagrammatic representation of a biological membrane bilayer (A), with the molecular structure of two representative phospholipids: a polyunsaturated phosphatidylcholine (B) and a monounsaturated phosphatidylcholine (C). In both structures, neither C nor H are shown, although the carbon atoms are numbered in the right-hand chain in C. (D) Three representative conformations of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) (22:6) acyl chain (solid line) in a phosphatidylcholine molecule (these conformations are from fig. 12 of Feller et al., 2002). In D, the sn-1 acyl chain is shown as a broken line.

View larger version (15K): [in a new window]   Fig. 2. The relationship between body mass of mammal and bird species and acyl composition of their skeletal muscle phospholipids. (A) The unsaturation index for birds and mammals. (B,C) Percentage of total unsaturates (UFA) and percentage composition of two individual acyl chains, the monounsaturated oleic acid (18:1 n-9) and the polyunsaturated docosahexaenoic acid (22:6 n-3), for mammals (B) and birds (C). The mammal data are from Hulbert et al. (2002c) and the bird data are from Hulbert et al. (2002a).

View larger version (23K): [in a new window]   Fig. 3. The relationship between the unsaturation index of dietary fats and the unsaturation index of phospholipids from four tissues in the rat. The diagonal line represents the line of equality where membrane composition is the same as dietary composition. The data are all taken from Soriguer et al. (2000).

View larger version (21K): [in a new window]   Fig. 4. The relationship between maximum lifespan of mammal and bird species and the peroxidizability index of their skeletal muscle phospholipids. The mammal data have been recalculated from Hulbert et al. (2002c) and the bird data from Hulbert et al. (2002a).