Does Short-Term Dietary Omega-3 Fatty Acid Supplementation Influence Brain Hippocampus Gene Expression of Zinc Transporter-3?

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Nur Farhana Ahmad Sopian¹  Mokrish Ajat¹  Nurul’ Izzati Shafie²  Mohd Hezmee Mohd Noor²  Mehdi Ebrahimi¹  Mohamed Ali Rajion¹  Goh Yong Meng²  Hafandi Ahmad¹ 

[1] Department of Veterinary Preclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia;

关键词: omega-3 fatty acid;    brain gene expression;    ZnT3;    cognitive function;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms160715800

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Dietary omega-3 fatty acids have been recognized to improve brain cognitive function. Deficiency leads to dysfunctional zinc metabolism associated with learning and memory impairment. The objective of this study is to explore the effect of short-term dietary omega-3 fatty acids on hippocampus gene expression at the molecular level in relation to spatial recognition memory in mice. A total of 24 male BALB/c mice were randomly divided into four groups and fed a standard pellet as a control group (CTL, n = 6), standard pellet added with 10% (w/w) fish oil (FO, n = 6), 10% (w/w) soybean oil (SO, n = 6) and 10% (w/w) butter (BT, n = 6). After 3 weeks on the treatment diets, spatial-recognition memory was tested on a Y-maze. The hippocampus gene expression was determined using a real-time PCR. The results showed that 3 weeks of dietary omega-3 fatty acid supplementation improved cognitive performance along with the up-regulation of α-synuclein, calmodulin and transthyretin genes expression. In addition, dietary omega-3 fatty acid deficiency increased the level of ZnT3 gene and subsequently reduced cognitive performance in mice. These results indicate that the increased the ZnT3 levels caused by the deficiency of omega-3 fatty acids produced an abnormal zinc metabolism that in turn impaired the brain cognitive performance in mice.

【 授权许可】

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© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.