Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/7227
Appears in Collections:Aquaculture Journal Articles
Peer Review Status: Refereed
Title: Long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid synthesis in a marine vertebrate: Ontogenetic and nutritional regulation of a fatty acyl desaturase with Delta4 activity
Author(s): Morais, Sofia
Castanheira, Filipa
Martinez-Rubio, Laura
Conceicao, Luis E C
Tocher, Douglas R
Contact Email: drt1@stir.ac.uk
Keywords: Δ4 desaturase
Polyunsaturated fatty acid synthesis
Ontogenesis
Transcriptional regulation
Solea senegalensis
Marine teleost
Issue Date: Apr-2012
Date Deposited: 6-Aug-2012
Citation: Morais S, Castanheira F, Martinez-Rubio L, Conceicao LEC & Tocher DR (2012) Long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid synthesis in a marine vertebrate: Ontogenetic and nutritional regulation of a fatty acyl desaturase with Delta4 activity. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA)- Molecular and Cell Biology of Lipids, 1821 (4), pp. 660-671. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbalip.2011.12.011
Abstract: Solea senegalensis is an unusual marine teleost as it has very low dietary requirement for long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) during early development. Aquaculture is rapidly becoming the main source of health-beneficial fish products for human consumption. This, associated with limited supply of LC-PUFA-rich ingredients for fish feeds, render S. senegalensis a highly interesting species in which to study the LC-PUFA biosynthesis pathway. We have cloned and functionally characterized fatty acyl desaturase and elongase cDNAs corresponding to D4fad (with some D5 activity for the n-3 series) and elovl5 with the potential to catalyze docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) biosynthesis from eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Changes in expression of both transcripts were determined during embryonic and early larval development, and transcriptional regulation in response to higher or lower dietary n-3 LC-PUFA was assessed during larval and post-larval stages. There was a marked pattern of regulation during early ontogenesis, with both transcripts showing peak expression coinciding with the start of exogenous feeding. Although elovl5 transcripts were present in fertilized eggs, D4fad only appeared at hatching. However, eggs have high proportions of DHA (~ 20%) and high DHA/EPA ratio (~ 11) to meet the high demands for early embryonic development. The fatty acid profile of larvae after the start of exogenous feeding closely reflected dietary composition. Nonetheless, D4fad was significantly up-regulated in response to LC-PUFA-poor diets, which may suggest biological relevance of this pathway in reducing LC-PUFA dietary requirements in this species, compared to other marine teleosts. These results indicate that sole is capable of synthesizing DHA from EPA through a Sprecher-independent pathway.
DOI Link: 10.1016/j.bbalip.2011.12.011
Rights: Published in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Molecular and Cell Biology of Lipids by Elsevier; Elsevier believes that individual authors should be able to distribute their accepted author manuscripts for their personal voluntary needs and interests, e.g. posting to their websites or their institution’s repository, e-mailing to colleagues. The Elsevier Policy is as follows: Authors retain the right to use the accepted author manuscript for personal use, internal institutional use and for permitted scholarly posting provided that these are not for purposes of commercial use or systematic distribution. An “accepted author manuscript” is the author’s version of the manuscript of an article that has been accepted for publication and which may include any author-incorporated changes suggested through the processes of submission processing, peer review, and editor-author communications.

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
BBALIP-S-11-00350.pdfFulltext - Accepted Version991.47 kBAdobe PDFView/Open



This item is protected by original copyright



Items in the Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

The metadata of the records in the Repository are available under the CC0 public domain dedication: No Rights Reserved https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

If you believe that any material held in STORRE infringes copyright, please contact library@stir.ac.uk providing details and we will remove the Work from public display in STORRE and investigate your claim.