GreenD
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Synthesis of Fatty Acids
Excuse me, but I cannot find anywhere (its very hard to search for) a synthesis for fatty acids. I am aware that biosynthesis can produce many types,
but I would like to know if there are purely chemical routes as well.
To my knowledge I don't think its possible to reliably produce varying lengths and unsaturations of fatty acids, can anyone help me here?
Thank you.
I am trying to identify what types of fatty acids - length and saturation produce specific effects on receptor proteins. Not all are commercially
available that I'd like to look into.
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Dr.Bob
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You can make or buy virtually any length or degree of saturation of fatty acid you want, but most of the starting materials that you would buy to make
them would have been derived from the fatty acid. This is a case where nature provides a very cheap source of them, as many different plant oils and
animal fats are enriched in different length fatty acids.
The saturated ones are easiest, as they can be made pure by hydrogenating mixtures of fats and then simply distilling the resulting saturated acids
away from each other. Stearic acid and palmamic acid are examples of ones obtained very cheaply from cow fat and palm oil, for example. For
unsaturated ones, getting them pure is harder, and might be done by making methyl esters (ie, biodiesel) and then distilling under vacuum to enrich in
certain lengths.
But to make very pure, specific, unsaturated ones is quite difficult, but quite possible. The PPAR receptors and some other nuclear receptor proteins
bind to many of these and produce certain effects, but only at moderately high concentrations (>1 mmolar) similarly to the way ethanol does),
compared to many other small molecules, like nicotine, opiates, and steroids, many of which are potent at levels below nanomolar.
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GreenD
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Our research is indicating high affinity to unsaturated fatty acids of varying length, specifically it seems, (so far - small sample size) that when
we have two double bonds separated by one single bond, we have activity, while a single double bond is not sufficient to produce activity.
So - I need a big tool box of many varying saturated lengths, unsaturated lengths, and multiple unsaturations in varying locations and distances
apart...
Enzymes may be the only answer to get them. I will look, but I really am not sure if there are indeed the options we need commercially available.
Making the methyl-esters and fractionating with distillation - very good. Yes.
But finding out whether it is a 3,5-unsaturated C18 or a 3,7-unsaturated C18 .. this would be difficult with distillation, and many other techniques,
no? Perhaps NMR could be used if it to distinguish SOME, but certainly not all.
Further, how would I even SEARCH for this - anyone have help here? My inclination would be "Enzymatic synthesis fatty acid" but this will
almost completely come up with simple biosynthesis, and not procedures for wet chemistry or wet-biochemistry protocols..
[Edited on 31-10-2012 by GreenD]
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Nicodem
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Thread Moved
1-11-2012 at 08:55 |
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