As shown in Wang X. et al. (2016), the 18-carbon FA showed high concentration (almost 60%) in mouse liver and high sensitivity to Nrf2 deficiency, which indicated that 18-carbon FA is the predominant component contributed to the formation of hepatocytes steatosis. Thus, SA (C18:0), OA (C18:1), LA (C18:2), and ALA (C18:3) were chosen as the HepG2 cells stimulus to investigate the role of 18-carbon FA in inducing CYP2A6 and the necessity of Nrf2 in the process. HepG2 cell line was used in this study because it regenerates easily and very similar to human normal hepatocytes in resisting lipid accumulation (Chao et al., 2010; Chavez-Tapia et al., 2011; Yao et al., 2011).
