Phospholipids, Phospholipid Methylation and Taurine Content in Synaptosomes of Developing Rat Brain

Many phenomena involving taurine appear to be based on a membrane-modifying action, although the nature of this action has remained largely undefined. Taurine stabilizes membranes under a variety of conditions, reducing malondialdehyde release induced by carbon tetrachloride (Nakashima et al., 1983), and antagonizing the loss of membrane function produced by phospholipase C (Huxtable and Bressler, 1973) among other actions. Taurine also modifies the calcium binding characteristics of membranes, increasing the affinity of calcium binding while decreasing the maximum binding capacity (Huxtable and Peterson, 1988; Sebring and Huxtable, 1985). Perhaps associated with this is a taurine-induced shift in the membrane transition temperature (Lombardini, 1985), and a stimulation of high affinity, energy-dependent calcium transport in the presence of bicarbonate (reviewed in Huxtable, 1989).