Carbachol stimulation of rat parotid gland fragments prelabelled with myo-[3H]-inositol results in a large accumulation after 15 min of [3H]inositol trisphosphate. Only some of this is the D-1,4,5 isomer which would be expected to be derived from the known phosphatidylinositol bisphosphate. The predominant inositol trisphosphate is not susceptible to hydrolysis by human erythrocyte membranes. I...

Inositol polyphosphates, in their water-soluble or lipid-bound forms, represent a large and multifaceted family of signalling molecules. Some inositol polyphosphates are well recognised as defining important signal transduction pathways, as in the case of the calcium release factor Ins(1,4,5)P3, generated by receptor activation-induced hydrolysis of the lipid PtdIns(4,5)P2 by phospholipase C. T...

The identification of a myo-inositol-containing phospholipid isolated from beef brain (1) as a triphosphoinositide has been reported in earlier publications from this laboratory (2) and in a note by Dittmer and Dawson (3). It has been established (2) by periodate oxidation that the myo-inositol moiety in the intact triphosphoinositide is substituted on the 1, 4, and 5 or 6 hydrosyl groups. When...

It is over a century since Scherer discovered in Liebig’s meat extract a hexahydroxycyclohexane which he named inositol (1). Since that time a number of similar compounds have been shown to occur in nature, and a few others have been synthesized in the laboratory. Of the nine possible stereoisomeric forms of hexahydroxycychlohexane, myo-inositol is by far the most widely distributed in nature a...

UNLABELLED Legionella pneumophila is a natural parasite of environmental amoebae and the causative agent of a severe pneumonia termed Legionnaires' disease. The facultative intracellular pathogen employs a bipartite metabolism, where the amino acid serine serves as the major energy supply, while glycerol and glucose are mainly utilized for anabolic processes. The L. pneumophila genome harbors t...

Efficient and systematic syntheses of a variety of enantiomerically pure and regiospecifically protected myo-inositols, which can be readily used as precursors for most natural and unnatural derivatives of myo-inositol, have been developed. The key strategies are the use of camphor as a protecting group and a chiral auxiliary and the development of regiospecific control in various steps. The di...

The intracellular concentrations of polyphosphoinositides and inositol phosphates were determined, and their role in growth factor-initiated cell division was investigated in a Chinese hamster ovary cell inositol auxotroph (CHO-K1-Ins). Metabolic labeling experiments during inositol starvation of CHO-K1-Ins cells showed that 1) the lipid-linked inositol component was maintained at the expense o...

The six-carbon polyol inositol is a uniquely versatile compound in biology. Myo-inositol is the major naturally occurring isomer of nine possible inositol isomers and is critical for the phosphoinositide (PI) cycle as a substrate for PI synthase (Berridge and Irvine 1989). Benjamins and Agranoff (1969) reported that epi-inositol is not a substrate for PI synthase, but a number of experiments su...

1. The effect of Li+ on the agonist-dependent metabolism of [3H]inositol has been studied in rat brain, rat parotid and the insect salivary gland. 2. When brain or parotid slices were incubated in the presence of [3H]inositol, Li+ was found to amplify the ability of agonists such as carbachol, phenylephrine, histamine, 5-hydroxytryptamine and Substance P to elevate the amount of label appearing...