A re-examination in vivo of the phosphatidylcholine-galactolipid metabolic relationship during plant lipid biosynthesis

It remains unclear how and in what form the lipids synthesized in plant endoplasmic reticulum are exported to chloroplasts and used as precursors for the biosynthesis of plastid galactolipids, which are the most abundant lipids on Earth. Neither the mechanism of transfer nor the nature of the lipids imported into plastids has been elucidated. To characterize events occurring in vivo, the labelling of lipids from 15-day-old leek seedlings (Allium porrum, var. furor) was studied using pulse-chase experiments. During the chase, a substantial decline in the radioactivity incorporated into phosphatidylcholine (and not in other phospholipids) was accompanied by an increase in the label found in galactolipids. The positional distribution of labelled fatty acids in phosphatidylcholine and galactolipids was further studied as a function of the chase time; whereas phosphatidylcholine was preferentially labelled at the sn-2 position, the increase in radioactivity in galactolipids mainly concerned the sn-1 position. These results strongly suggest that the diacylglycerol moiety of phosphatidylcholine might not be integrated as a whole in the galactolipid.