O. Dumont

TL;DR: Fatty acid analysis in isolated cellular and subcellular material from sunflower‐fed animals showed that the total amount of unsaturated fatty acids was not reduced in any cellular or sub cellular fraction (except in 60‐day‐old rat neurons).

TL;DR: In several organs (muscle, lung, kidney, liver, heart) as well as in myelin, very low levels of dietary linoleic acid led to an increase in 20∶5n−3, and accumulation of docosapentaenoic acid was the most direct and specific consequence of increasing amounts of dietary 18∶2n−6.

TL;DR: During pre- and postnatal development, Δ6 desaturase in brain and liver decreased dramatically up to postnatal day 21 and remained nearly constant thereafter and decreased with age from then on.

TL;DR: There is a linear relationship between brain content of (n-3) acids and the content of the diet up to the point where alpha-linolenic levels reach 200 mg for 100 g food intake, and beyond that level there is a plateau, but for the other organs, such as the liver, there is merely an abrupt change in slope and not a plateau.

TL;DR: In all fractions examined, when sunflower oil was replaced by soya oil in 15‐day‐old pups the recovery started from the very first day but lasted more than 2 months, and a delay was found for myelin recovery, starting only from the 25th day.