Nomenclature of Fatty Acids

Fatty acids are either called by their systematic names according to the IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, http://www.iupac.org/) nomenclature or by their trivial names. Actually trivial names are used much more frequently than systematic names, because most researchers in the field of lipidomics or lipid research are more familiar with these names than with systematic names. Another systematic way of naming fatty acids would be a shorthand nomenclature which has evolved over decades where fatty acids are named by the abbreviation FA, their number of carbon atoms, and their number of double bonds after a colon, e.g., FA 16:0. Sometimes, the shorthand nomenclature also contains the positioning of the first double bond from the omega end written in parenthesis, e.g., FA 18:3(n-3). The omega position of the first double bond helps in some cases not to confuse fatty acids differing just in the position of double bonds. In a sometimes used variation of this...