Enzymatic modification of phosphatidylcholine with n-3 PUFA from silkworm oil fatty acids

Abstract

α-Linolenic acid (ALA) containing phosphatidylcholine (PC) was prepared by an enzymatic method employing natural substrates comprising of egg and eri silkworm oil. Eri silkworm oil extracted from eri pupae was saponified to obtain the fatty acid mixture which was further subjected to urea complexation to obtain an ALA rich fraction with a purity of about 93%. Transesterification of PC with the ALA rich fraction with three immobilized lipases namely Lipozyme TL IM, Lipozyme RM IM and lipase from Candida Antarcticaz showed that only the lipase from Candida antarctica was successful for the incorporation of ALA into egg yolk PC. It was found that ALA was incorporated by up to 27% in the sn-1 position of egg PC and the positional distribution analysis of fatty acids in the modified PC showed that the sn-1 position was found to contain about 59% ALA.

Keywords

• α-linolenic acid
• egg phosphatidylcholine
• lipase
• nutraceuticals
• silkworm oil