All articles
Miscellaneous
Gene transfer of C elegans n3 fatty acid desaturase and fatty acids – (04-30-01)
James Bogash
Gene transfer of C elegans n3 fatty acid desaturase and fatty acids
At first this article sounds very technical. I’ll try to boil it down and explain how scary the implications are and how far science will go to try to best nature. The desaturase enzyme that converts omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids is absent or weak in humans. That means that we need to maintain a 1:5-6 ratio of omega 6 to 3 fatty acids. However, with todays’ junkie lifestyle, the numbers are closer to 1:20 or 30. So what does this article suggest? Change our lifestyle? Nope. Use a virus to give us the gene to produce the desaturase enzyme and produce a more optimal ratio. Pretty twisted if you ask me…
PNAS — Abstracts: Kang et al. 98 (7): 4050
