Lipid fatty acid and protein pattern of equine prostasome-like vesicles

The semen of several mammals contains vesicles of different composition and origin. We have recently reported on the presence of lipoprotein vesicles in stallion semen. To a certain extent, these resemble human prostasomes, but differ from them in amount and composition. These horse-semen prostasome...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part B: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 2001-04, Vol.128 (4), p.661-666
Main Authors: Arienti, Giuseppe, Polci, Andrea, De Cosmo, Attilio, Saccardi, Carla, Carlini, Enrico, Palmerini, Carlo A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Fatty acid
Fatty Acids - analysis
Fluidity
Horses - physiology
Humans
Male
Membrane
Membrane Fluidity
Phospholipids - analysis
Prostasomes
Prostate - secretion
Proteins - analysis
Semen
Semen - chemistry
Stallion
Vesicles
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Summary:The semen of several mammals contains vesicles of different composition and origin. We have recently reported on the presence of lipoprotein vesicles in stallion semen. To a certain extent, these resemble human prostasomes, but differ from them in amount and composition. These horse-semen prostasome-like vesicles may be important, not only in horse reproductive physiology, but also in view of stallion semen cryopreservation. In this paper, we have studied horse-semen prostasome-like vesicles and found that they possess less saturated fatty acid than human prostasomes. Moreover, their protein pattern (SDS-PAGE electrophoresis) shows that the 30–50-kDa fraction is less abundant in stallion vesicles. In addition, fluidity (measured as fluorescence anisotropy of diphenylhexatriene) is higher in horse prostasome-like vesicles than in human prostasomes, albeit being much lower than that of most membranes. These findings may be connected to some species-related differences in reproductive physiology: the vaginal milieu of the mare is not acidic and the deposition of semen is intrauterine in the horse but vaginal in humans.
ISSN:1096-4959
1879-1107
DOI:10.1016/S1096-4959(00)00351-1