Comedy - 3-3-2007 at 02:47
Does anyone know a facile extraction (or synthesis) of arichidonic acid from natural sources? Supposedly it's only in animal fats. Is it in sufficient
amounts to make a synthesis worththe effort? Has anyone on this board ever tried this?
JohnWW - 3-3-2007 at 04:26
Its name suggests that arachidonic acid (which has 4 conjugated double bonds) might be in peanut oil (arachis species), along with arachic (less
unsaturated) and arachidic (saturated) acids, as the triglycerides. These are 20-carbon straight-chain acids. However, they would be only minor
constituents of peanut oil, which is mostly oleic acid (60%), linoleic acid (20%) (both 18-C unsaturated), stearic acid (5%) (18-C saturated),
palmitic acid (7%) (16-C saturated).
Comedy - 3-3-2007 at 04:34
I looked it up, and unfortunately the names are only similar because they both have 20 carbon atoms, there is only a trace amount in peanut oil.
not_important - 3-3-2007 at 07:26
The building of long chain unsaturated fatty acids in the test tube is a pain. Best way often is isolation and selective culturing of some
microorganism, or gene splicing into a friendly bacteria.
Also see
Arachidonic acid and methods for its isolation from natural materials
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m08287w7817j31r9/
An isolation procedure for arachidonic acid producing Mortierella species
http://www.springerlink.com/content/t4568840h81w2282/
Attachment: The isolation of arachidonic acid from brain tissue.pdf (340kB)
This file has been downloaded 670 times