Glycosphingolipid expression in neural tissues of three rat strains

Many neurological disorders and injuries such as Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke, traumatic injury to CNS etc. have movement abnormalities as major symptom. Numerous animal models of neurological disease and injury exist, especially in rats, and most common used strains are Lewis, Wistar and Sprague-Dawley. These three strains show different neurological behaviour. Glycosphingolipids (GSLs), both neutral and gangliosides are, according to their role, differently distributed in neural tissues and synaptic mechanisms. Therefore, comparison of GSL expression in neural tissues of three rat strains was performed. The aim was to identify GSLs which could be responsible for different neurological behaviour Three different male, age-matched rat strains were used: Lewis, Wistar and Sprague-Dawley. GSLs were isolated from animal tissues by standard procedure. Distribution of GSLs in brain, cerebellum and brain stem of each group of animals were analyzed by orcinol-staining. Cerebellum of Lewis rats showed slightly lower expression of GSLs GD1b, GD1b, GT1b and GQ1b in comparison to cerebellum of Wistar rats, and extremely lower expression of same glycosphingolipids in Sprague-Dawley cerebellum. Moreover, Wistar brain and pons showed enhanced expression of those glycosphingolipids comparing to Sprague-Dawley rats. Finally, the highest expression of complex glycosphingolipids was found in brain of Lewis rats. We can conclude that differences in glycosphingolipid expression between neural tissues of three laboratory rat strains exist which suggests that special glycosphingolipids play important role in special neural synapses, but to final conclusion, advanced immunostaining of individual antibodies should be performed.