The occurrence of long chain polyprenols in leaves of plants of Rosaceae family and their isolation by time-extended liquid chromatography

Abstract

The long chain polyprenols composed of 30 and more isoprene units from leaves of plants belonging to the genera Potentilla and Rosa have been described. They occur in the form of fatty acid esters. The composition of polyprenol mixture was species dependent and its content reached ca. 0.5% wet weight. Large scale preparation of individual polyprenols from a natural polyprenol mixture was performed using time-extended liquid chromatography on the hydrophobic gel Lipidex-5000.

Distribution of Branch Point Prenyltransferases in Regions of Bovine Brain

“…Takegawa, Kururay Co ., Okayama, Japan . a-Unsaturated polyprenols, used as standards, were prepared from Sorbus suecica and Pinus silvestris as described previously (Swiezewska et al ., 1992(Swiezewska et al ., , 1994 . On TLC in different solvent systems, all polyprenols and phosphorylated derivatives gave single spots .…”

Natural Rubber from Plants

“…The estimated upper limit is 10 7 daltons. Non-elastomeric polyisoprenes having molecular weights below 7 x 10 3 daltons also occur in monocotydenous species [39] and in plant families, such as Rosaceae [40][41][42], which are not typically associated as rubber-producers. Polymers produced by commercial rubber-producing species contain about 10,000 -15,000 isoprenes and have molecular weights that range from 0.7 -1.0 x 10 6 daltons.…”

“…Polymers produced by commercial rubber-producing species contain about 10,000 -15,000 isoprenes and have molecular weights that range from 0.7 -1.0 x 10 6 daltons. These are termed polyprenyl esters and also appear to be fairly common in nature [41,42]. Low molecular weight rubbers containing fewer than 3000 isoprenes per molecule are more common in the plant kingdom but do not make useful rubber elastomers.…”

“…These isoprenyl alcohols are ubiquitous in nature and are essential to all eukaryotic cells, but exist only in minute quantities in cellular membranes [43]. Because of their close chemical resemblance to rubber, it has been postulated that dolichols and cispolyprenols might be progenitors of higher molecular weight rubber [41,44]. Rubber, which is believed to have recent evolutionary origins [45], is thought to be produced by the same biochemical reactions and cellular machinery that generate dolichols.…”

“…Dolichol is known to be phosphorylated by the enzyme dolichol kinase which yields dolichyl phosphate. Analysis of fatty acids cleaved from polyprenols reveals that they possess a wide range of chain lengths, from C 16 to C w and have various degrees of saturation and unsaturation [41,42,44]. If these enzymes also exist in rubber producing species, then large isoprenoid diphosphates could be generated to initiate rubber biosynthesis.…”