Abstract
BackgroundThe consumption of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) is important to human health, especially in cases of cardiovascular disease. Although beneficial effects of n-3 PUFAs have been observed in a number of studies, the mechanisms involved in these effects have yet to be discovered.MethodsWe generated hfat-1 transgenic pigs with traditional somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) technology. The fatty acid composition in ear tissue of pigs were detected with gas chromatography. The cholesterol, triglycerides (TAG) and inflammation mediators in circulation were investigated.ResultsThe hfat-1 transgenic pigs were developed which accumulate high levels of n-3 PUFAs than wild-types pigs. Gas chromatography results demonstrated that the total n-3 PUFAs in the ear tissues of the transgenic founders were 2-fold higher than the wild-type pigs. A lipid analysis demonstrated that the levels of TAG in the transgenic pigs were decreased significantly. The basal levels of the inflammation mediators tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) in transgenic pigs were inhibited markedly compared with the wild-type pigs.ConclusionsThese results suggest that n-3 PUFAs accumulation in vivo may have beneficial effects on vascular and hfat-1 transgenic pigs may be a useful tool for investigating the involved mechanisms.
Highlights
The consumption of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) is important to human health, especially in cases of cardiovascular disease
Generation of hfat-1 transgenic pigs Unlike the development of transgenic mice which use embryonic stem cells (ES) for preselection of gene insertion [33], primary embryonic pig fibroblasts were employed for transfection with a linearized hfat-1 expression plasmid
Thirty clones exhibited both the expected 458 bp band of hfat-1 and the 790 bp band of the neomycin sequence; 5 of these clones were selected for presentation in this paper and for individually performing somatic somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) in the following step (Fig. 2a and b)
Summary
The consumption of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) is important to human health, especially in cases of cardiovascular disease. N-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are important dietary fatty acids, including alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). EPA and DHA can be converted from ALA through desaturation-chain elongation pathway in mammals [2, 3]. The primary source of this fatty acids for humans is dietary supplementation. Fat-1 gene in caenorhabditis elegans encodes an n-3 fatty acids desaturase which are able to convert n-6 to n-3 fatty acids by adding a double bond into n-6 fatty acids at the n-3 hydrocarbon position [9, 10]. Researchers developed transgenic mice, pigs and cows carrying the fat-1 gene previously and observed higher n-3 PUFAs accumulation in tissues [11,12,13,14]
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