Ganglioside Patterns of Fetal Rat and Mouse Brain

Abstract

The developmental appearance of gangliosides in mammalian brain has been studied almost exclusively at postnatal stages. These studies show the presence at birth of at least four major gangliosides, with GMI (nomenclature of Svennerholm, 1963) t h e major monosialoganglioside (Suzuki, 1965;Vanier et al., 1971;Merat and Dickerson, 1973). In recent studies on fetal brain from rats (Berra et al., 1978) and mice (Rosner, 1977), the concentration of GMI has been reported to be relatively high at the earliest developmental stages studied, and to decline as development proceeds. However, our studies of ganglioside metabolism in retina and brain of the fetal rat have led us to believe that the dominant ganglioside at early stages in development is more likely Gnn than GMl.

Expression of Plasma Membrane and Cell Surface Phospholipids and Gangliosides of Chick Embryo Neurons Grown in Primary Cultures: Developmental Studies

“…Other authors have described reciprocal variations between GM1 and GD3 during the development of rat and chick brain [36,37], We have shown a similar inter relationship in the plasma membrane, which supports the hypothesis that Ggl are involved in neurotrophic and neuritogenic processes [10,38]. Our data also agree with other findings suggesting that the neuronal plasma mem brane is particularly enriched in Ggl [10].…”

Developmental Changes in Ganglioside Composition of Hippocampus, Retina, and Optic Tectum

“…We suggest that this crossover point represents a simple quan tifiable characteristic of ganglioside meta bolism unique to each tissue in a given species. We have found this indicator to correlate well with the sequence of morphological differen tiation in discrete regions of the rat brain other than the hippocampus [21]. In the pre sent case, it accurately reflects the sequence of neural differentiation and synaptogenesis among the three tissues studied [I, 5,6,7,18,25,26], Another objective of this study was to analyze ganglioside content and pattern in discrete brain tissue where the time course for maturation of circuitry and cytoarchitecture is well known, in order to correlate ganglio side metabolism with specific morphogenetic events during development.…”

“…[4] have recently noted the prevalence of D3 in white matter of adult sheep and pig. We have recently shown M3 and D3 to be the major gangliosides at early developmental stages in the fetal rat brain [24] as well as the presence at birth and sub sequent decline of the D3 complex in a num ber of specific rat brain regions [21]. The early prevalence and subsequent decline of the D3 complex thus appears to be a general feature of development in avian and mammalian brains.…”

Inhibition of Glycosphingolipid Biosynthesis Does Not Impair Growth or Morphogenesis of the Postimplantation Mouse Embryo

“…A significant body of literature suggests that gangliosides are expressed in the CNS in a cellspecific and developmentally regulated fashion (Ledeen, 1985;Yu, 1993). Furthermore, changes in GSL expression during development correlate with changes in cellular growth and migration, differentiation, neuritogenesis, and synaptogenesis (Suzuki, 1965;Irwin et al, 1980;Seyfried et al, 1983;Bremer et al, 1986;Fenderson et al, 1987;Andrews et al, 1990;Hakomori, 1990;Schengrund, 1990;Rosenberg et al, 1992;Rosenberg and Noble, 1993;Wu et al, 1995;Zeng et al, 1995). These findings, together with evidence for a phylogenetic conservation of ganglioside expression and the absence of natural ganglioside biosynthetic mutations, have led to the hypothesis that GSLs play a critical role in developmental processes (Seyfried, 1988;Irvine and Seyfried, 1994).…”