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Synthesis Of Dha Essay

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As previously mentioned the brain is enriched with polyunsaturated fatty acids, particularily DHA and the omega-6 AA. While the brain can synthesize saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, it must rely on uptake of either the preformed DHA and AA or their dietary precursors, which can be converted to DHA and ARA within the brain. While the brain does have the capacity to synthsize DHA its rate of synthesis relative to uptake from the plasma is relatively low suggesting that uptake from plasma and not synthesis within the brain is the major source. Furthermore, while the liver can upregulate its ability to synthesize DHA especially under conditions of low dietary omega-3 intake, the brain does not upregulate DHA synthesis under these conditions. …show more content…

We found that the coefficient of uptake or the rate of uptake from the unesterified pool, alone, was sufficient to explain the rate of uptake of all the labelled plasma pools upon oral administration. Or more, simply put, it appeared as if the unesterified pool was the major source, if not the only source, supplying the brain upon oral administration. We then used another kinetic model to calculate the rate at which DHA exists the brain and found this rate of DHA exiting the brain to be similar to the uptake rate from the plasma unesterified pool. Because DHA is no longer accumulating in the rodent brain, this suggested that unesterified DHA was, again, the major pool supplying the brain. Importantly, several groups had reported that upon acute administration of labelled unesterified DHA or DHA esterified to lysophosphatidylcholine, more radioactivity, presumably from DHA, was present in the brain after several hours. Furthermore, evidence that Mfsd2a a protein that facilicates the uptake of lsyophosphatidlycholine containing DHA into the brain, knockout had lower brain DHA levels compared to wildytype controls combined with observation of more radiolabelled DHA entering the brain was used to suggest that lysophosphosphaticly choline containing DHA was the major plasma source

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