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Lipids and Essential Fatty Acids in Aquatic Food Webs: What Can Freshwater Ecologists Learn from Mariculture?

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Lipids in Freshwater Ecosystems

Abstract

Only a few decades have passed since the major discovery that certain fatty acids, or more precisely, the family of fatty acids denoted n-6 or ω6 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA), are essential for humans (Holman et al., 1964;Hansen et al., 1963). These fatty acids are characterized by having their first double bond between carbon number 6 and 7 from the methyl end. In the late 1970s, it was shown that also the family of n-3 or ω3 fatty acids, characterized by having the first double bond between carbon number 3 and 4 from the methyl end, are essential for normal growth and function of the human brain (Leaf, 1993;Bjerve, 1991;Neuringer et al., 1988;Crawford et al., 1981, 1976). The impact of dietary ω3 fatty acids on the incidences of vascular and coronary diseases was first described by Danish scientists (Dyerberg et al., 1977; 1975) who compared the food habits and health of Greenland Inuits with people from Denmark (representative for the Western industrialized world). This classic work brought a major change in thinking about how the current role of lipids in metabolism is viewed; from being a metabolic fuel compound usually associated with obesity in the Western world to an essential compound in a wide range of metabolic functions. Since then, it has been thoroughly demonstrated that ω3 fatty acids affect human health by reducing blood lipid levels, by reducing the rate of atherosclerosis and thrombus formation and by altering inflammatory and immune responses (see review by Leaf, 1993).

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  1. Yngvar Olsen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Water Research Institute, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7N 3H5, Canada

    Michael T. Arts

  2. McMaster Midwifery Education Program, McMaster University, St. Joseph’s Hospital, Hamilton, Ontario, L8N 4A6, Canada

    Bruce C. Wainman

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Olsen, Y. (1999). Lipids and Essential Fatty Acids in Aquatic Food Webs: What Can Freshwater Ecologists Learn from Mariculture?. In: Arts, M.T., Wainman, B.C. (eds) Lipids in Freshwater Ecosystems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0547-0_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0547-0_9

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