Abstract
Enhanced α-linolenic acid (ALA) intake effectively alleviates population sub-health status through dietary pattern modification, demonstrating substantial implications for promoting national health advancement. In this study, the multi-targeted regulation on ALA micellization, absorption, and lymphatic transport by natural flaxseed lignan macromolecules (FLM) and its thermal treatment products (FLM 150) was systematically investigated in an emulsion delivery system. In vitro Caco-2 transport assays revealed that ALA absorption was enhanced by 95% with the addition of FLM 150. Moreover, in vivo rat mesenteric lymph cannulation proved that FLM 150-enriched emulsion elevated ALA absorption by 493%, while significantly reducing lipid oxidation. Besides, lipidomic profiling indicated that FLM 150 enhanced triglyceride resynthesis during lipid resynthesis in intestinal epithelial cells, as well as promoted metabolism of ALA. Therefore, these findings established FLM 150 as a multi-target regulator optimizing ALA bioavailability through concurrent mucosal barrier reinforcement, oxidative stress mitigation, and lipid metabolic pathway redirection. These insights highlighted the potential of engineered emulsion systems to lipid absorption kinetics and intestinal metabolic outcomes, offering novel strategies for enhancing the bioavailability of ALA.
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Data availability
The lipidomics were analyzed using the Public Database MSDAIL and Peakview 2.0 software. Global lipidomic principal component analysis (PCA), heatmap, and correlation analysis were performed using the software of MetaboAnalyst 4.0.
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (32402168 and 32072267), Research Funding of Wuhan Polytechnic University NO.2025R2050, and China Agriculture Research System of CRAS-14. We extend our gratitude to WETRYBIO Biotechnology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. for providing rat thoracic lymphatic duct cannulation experimental technique and platform (WTPZ20221212001).
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Chen Cheng was responsible for the writing of the original draft, methodology, and visualization. Xiao Yu was responsible for the writing of the original draft and visualization. Lei Wang was responsible for the conceptualization and data analysis. Shuyi Li was responsible for conceptualization and formal analysis. Xu Chen was responsible for conceptualization, writing of the original draft, and visualization. Qianchun Deng was responsible for supervision, conceptualization, and funding acquisition. Zhenzhou Zhu was responsible for conceptualization and visualization. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Cheng, C., Yu, X., Wang, L. et al. The regulation mechanism of α-linolenic acid bioavailability by flaxseed lignan macromolecules in O/W emulsions. npj Sci Food (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-026-00814-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-026-00814-7
