Enriching Artemia salina with punicic acid and docosahexaenoic acid to feed Nothobranchius furzeri

Details

Supervisors

Page, Melissa ; Larondelle, Yvan

Faculty

Faculté des bioingénieurs

Degree label

Master [120] : bioingénieur en sciences agronomiques, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

This Master’s thesis falls within the framework of Ph.D. thesis studying the effects of chosen dietary acids on age-related diseases in brain and liver tissues, using the African turquoise killifish (Nothobranchius furzeri) as a model. Indeed, N. furzeri is known to be a good aging model through its common age-associated phenotypes with humans, but also through its suitability to laboratory experiments. Moreover, the killifish was initially reported to develop spontaneous liver tumors. From this perspective, a first feeding experiment within the framework of this thesis was conducted on N. furzeri. Punicic acid, a fatty acid associated with anti-tumor effects, was given to killifish through the enrichment of Artemia salina, a zooplankton crustacean widely used as a vehicle in fish production to administer bioactive compounds to fish. The sudden publication of an article indicating a potential misidentification of these tumors has taken this work into a slightly different direction with a focus on establishing N. furzeri as a model to study inflammaging. The process of aging is inevitable, accompanied with many changes in the body, and leading to death. Among these changes, low-grade chronic inflammation, called inflammaging can occur and is considered to contribute to most age-related diseases such as cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, and respiratory diseases. A way to modulate aging and inflammaging is through nutrition, and some fatty acids such as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in particular have shown beneficial effects on inflammation. Through this work, an optimal protocol has been established to enrich Artemia nauplii in DHA with the future aim of studying the effects of DHA on age-related inflammation in N. furzeri. The results following an optimal enrichment period reached a mean DHA concentration of 23.48 ± 11.76 mg.g-1 of lyophilized Artemia tissue. Given the total absence of DHA in regular Artemia and the lower recovered DHA content following enrichment in previous publications, the objective of optimizing parameters to improve the DHA-enrichment of Artemia seems to have been achieved. Altogether, this Master’s thesis represents a small step allowing the study of in vivo effects of DHA on age-related diseases to progress.