Comparative lipidomics reveals a global sampling of major cellular membrane lipids by human CD1 proteins (P5006)

Abstract

Abstract Human CD1 proteins have differentially shaped grooves and present bacterial or self lipid antigens to T cells, but it is unknown whether the pool of endogenous lipids are differently sampled by each type of CD1 proteins. We used recently established lipidomic approach to analyze the molecules extracted from human CD1a, CD1b, CD1c, and CD1d proteins. In the study, we demonstrated that this highly sensitive and accurate lipidomic approach detected more than one thousand diverse molecules defined by accurate mass retention time values, which represented hundreds of lipid species associated with CD1 proteins. More than fifty percent of these molecules were shared by all four types of CD1 proteins and additional thirty percent shared by two or three CD1 isoforms. Further mass spectrometry analyses of collision-induced dissociation showed that the molecules eluted from all four types of CD1 proteins mainly are lipids from subcellular membranes, including phospholipids of conventional, ether-linked, and lyso forms and sphingolipids. Surprisingly, CD1 isoforms with bigger grooves preferred to lipids with shorter chains, which can be explained by small spacer or scaffold lipids that bind together with antigens. Whereas previous studies argued that one lipid molecule blocks CD1 grooves, analogous to MHC class II-associated CLIP peptide, we conclude that CD1 proteins broadly sample cellular lipids and two small lipids are able to be adapted into a big groove.