Does It Make Sense to Replace Linoleic Acid in Cardiolipin?
We already know that in order to maintain a healthy metabolism, we need to keep our mitochondria in very good condition. But how do we do that? When I tried to find out what the usual composition of cardiolipin, one of the most important phospholipids in a healthy mitochondrial membrane, is, I always found that it contains a high percentage of tetralinoleoyl cardiolipin (4L-CL), i.e. cardiolipin containing four linoleic acid chains. Cis-vaccenic acid (cVA) comes in second, and only further down do we find, for example, DHA (in mitochondria from the heart), oleic acid, or other polyunsaturated fatty acids. In some studies, researchers have tried to replace linoleic acid with the long-chain fatty acids ARA and DHA, but the results are not particularly encouraging. For example, in this study , they tried to remodel cardiolipin by manipulating the enzyme ALCAT1 and achieved the incorporation of more DHA into cardiolipin, but they obtained the best results after shutting down remodeling v...