Polyunsaturated fatty acids synthesized by freshwater fish: A new insight to the roles of elovl2 and elovl5 in vivo.

Abstract At present, fish provide an important supply of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs) for human consumption. Previous studies have shown that fatty acyl elongase 2 (elovl2) and elovl5 play important roles in fish LC-PUFA synthesis. Generally, freshwater fish have a stronger ability to synthesize LC-PUFAs than marine fish. However, the roles of elovl2, elovl5 and elovl2 + elovl5 in LC-PUFA synthesis of freshwater fish in vivo are not very clear. In this study, the elovl2 knockout zebrafish (elovl2−/−), elovl5 knockout zebrafish (elovl5−/−) and the double gene knockout zebrafish (DKO) were generated by CRISPR/Cas9 technology for the first time. Compared with wild type zebrafish (WT), elovl5-deletion zebrafish showed a significant increase in C22 PUFA content, which might be due to the up-regulation expressions of elovl4b and elovl2. elovl5 expressed at very low levels in livers of elovl2−/− relative to WT, indicating that elovl5 may be an “assistant attacker” of elovl2 in LC-PUFA synthesis of zebrafish. Moreover, there were no significant differences in levels of C18–C22 PUFAs between DKO and WT, indicating that besides elovl2 + elovl5 path, LC-PUFA synthesis in zebrafish could be performed by other paths. In addition, the hepatic lipidomic analysis results revealed that the contents of C22:6n-3 in phosphatidyl ethanolamine (PE-DHA) and PE-C22 PUFAs were more easily affected by the absence of elovl2 and elovl5. Our results suggest that the elovl2+elovl5 path is not the only path for LC-PUFA synthesis in zebrafish, and provide novel insights into the roles of elovl2 and elovl5 in LC-PUFA synthesis of freshwater fish.