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Updated: Jul 10, 2026

Lipid Supplementation for Longevity and Gene Transcriptional Analysis in Caenorhabditis elegans
Published on: December 9, 2022
Carnitine is associated with fatty acid metabolism in plants
Benoîte Bourdin1, Hervé Adenier, Yolande Perrin
1UMR-CNRS 6022 Génie Enzymatique et Cellulaire, Centre de Recherche Royallieu, Université de Technologie de Compiègne, Compiègne Cedex, France.
Abstract:
The finding of acylcarnitines alongside free carnitine in Arabidopsis thaliana and other plant species, using tandem mass spectrometry coupled to liquid chromatography shows a link between carnitine and plant fatty acid metabolism. Moreover the occurrence of both medium- and long-chain acylcarnitines suggests that carnitine is connected to diverse fatty acid metabolic pathways in plant tissues. The carnitine and acylcarnitine contents in plant tissues are respectively a hundred and a thousand times lower than in animal tissues, and acylcarnitines represent less than 2% of the total carnitine pool whereas this percentage reaches 30% in animal tissues. These results suggest that carnitine plays a lesser role in lipid metabolism in plants than it does in animals.
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