ABSTRACT
The Bay of Bengal is the largest bay in the world. It is bordered predominantly by Sri Lanka and India to the west, Bangladesh to the north, and Myanmar to the east. It comprises an area of about 2,172,000 km2. The coastal area of the Bay of Bengal has a large number of marine organisms more specically sh containing high level of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) particularly n-3 (omega 3) series with potential therapeutic importance. During the last 30 years of extensive studies on PUFAs of n-3 series, the major components of marine lipids have been found to modulate blood lipid proles in a number of chronic diseases and other pathophysiological disorders like diabetes, arthritis, cataract development of eye, kidney defects, atherosclerosis, heart attack, depression, cancer, and ulcerative colitis neoplasm (Simopoulos 1991). Recent report suggests important benecial effects of EPA-/DHA-enriched PUFA in combating a number of diseases (https://www. umms.org 2009) and nutritional importance of n-3 fatty acids (https://www.articlebase. com/health-articles/omega-3-sh-oil-epaand-dha-explained-4011.html). Further study in recent times indicates the therapeutic effects on cardiovascular disease (Pei-Chen et al. 2009) and depression (Jazayeri et al. 2008). The essential fatty acids, namely, EPA, 20:5 n-3 and DHA, 22:6 n-3, are required to be provided as dietary supplements (Rose 1997) since human body is incapable of de novo synthesis of these fatty acids. Major marine lipid components are essential constituents of mammalian cell membranes (Hazra et al. 2003), which act as triene prostaglandin (PG) precursors. Dietary intake of these fatty acids is effective in lowering plasma concentration of triacylglycerol (TG) (Sanders et al. 1981).
