If unsatuaration means deficit in hydrogen atoms, then enzymes that remove hydrogen atoms are your best bet, typically dehydrogenases commonly called fatty acid desaturases. They are abundant in the endoplasmic reticulum. A double bond is formed and two molecules of H2O are released. Two electrons come from NADH and two from the single bond of the fatty acyl substrate.

If you heated saturated fatty acids with the catalyst (platinum black or Rainey nickel ) and didn’t add hydrogen gas, you would probably get some unsaturation.

Some microbial reductase enzyme may be used to convert saturated fatty acid to unsaturated one. Hydrogenase may be mitochondrial one will also have the same catalytic function.

Hello Mohamed, thank you for the question. Treatment with hydrogen (hydrogenation) is the process for converting unsaturated fatty acid into saturated fatty acid. The addition of hydrogen converts the alkenes (from unsaturated fatty acid) into alkenes (saturated fatty acids).

Hydrogenation, however, is not the reaction you are asking for. You are asking for the opposite of that, dehydrogenation, where you remove hydrogen in order to convert saturated fatty acid in unsaturated fatty acid. Dehydrogenase enzymes are oxidoreductase enzyme used to speed up the reaction rate of dehydrogenation. Dehydrogenation are know for being endothermic and occurring at extremely high temperature.

@ Maurice Ekpenyong

@ Jasim Al-saadi

@ Shamsher Singh Kanwar

@ Pascal Amani Chigangu

Thank you very much for your help

I ask for enzymatic reaction as I want to use immobilization technology in this conversion

The other important consideration here is the location of the unsaturation- there will be many possible positional and stereoisomers. Is there a specific location that you want the new double bond to be in? That makes a difference in the choice of potential enzymes as well.

James Joseph Neitzel firstly, thank you very much for your answer.

the problem is, I have a mixture of phospholipids and Linolenic acid ( unsaturated fatty acids) , the final product should be phospholipids with high content of saturated fatty acids.

Addition of hydrogen across double bonds by hydrogenation in presence of catalysts like nickel may solve your problem.

The mixture of phospholipids and linolenic acid may be resolved by TLC or adsorption on a silica column. Thence the unsaturation may be achieved either metal-chemical catalysis of enzymatic catalysis.

I have done this by using a catalyst (usually Pd on carbon.) The source of hydrogen can either be hydrogen gas, or exchanged from cyclohexene (the cyclohexene gives up hydrogen and is converted to benzene.)

Catalytic hydrogenation of linoleic acid can be caries over several Pd- and Ru-supported catalysts as well as some bimetallic catalysts.

The use of mesoporous carbon support material promoted catalytic activity and the consecutive hydrogenation will be very fast over these catalysts.

Chigangu A. thank you very much for your concern and helpful informations

Nalluri Mallikarjuna Rao thank you very much for your help.my aim is using immobilized enzyme only

Shamsher S. Kanwar thank you very much for your helpful information

Abdel Fattah A. Qaraman thank you very much for your information, my aim is using immobilized enzymes

It shall be easy to immobilize hydrogenase or reductase on silica or celite 545 by Adsorption and iron nanoparticles by TEOS-activation.