Fatty acids in the lipid of food products from sea urchin.

The fatty acid compositions of the lipids from the fermented sea urchin paste, the salted sea urchin gonads, and the raw sea urchin gonads have been investigated with open-tubular gas-liquid chromatography. All the samples contained about 10.1-17.1% of the unusual 5-olefinic acids such as 5-18:1, 5-20:1, 5, 11-20:2, 5, 13-20:2, 5, 11, 14-20:3, and 5, 11, 14, 17-20:4 and about 0.9-1.3% of the unusual 7-olefinic acids such as 7, 13-22:2 and 7, 15-22:2, similar to the previous studies in our laboratory. The major polyunsaturated acids of these samples were 18:4 n-3 (0.2-6.3%), 20:4 n-6 (4.1-7.6%), and 20:5 n-3 (1.9-17.0%). All the samples showed about 40 species of fatty acid components and various fatty acid compositions. Especially, the salted sea urchin gonads B contained 20:5 n-3, ten times as much as the salted sea urchin gonads A. It was in-ferred that the difference between fatty acid compositions of these samples were related to the fatty acid compositions of the sea urchins which were used as the material.