According to a new Oregon State University study, the gelatin in the skin of Pacific whiting, a common fish on the North America Pacific Coast, may help reduce skin wrinkling caused by UV exposure.

Pacific Whiting's anti-aging properties
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(Photo : MYCHELE DANIAU/AFP via Getty Images)

The mild, white flesh fish commonly known as hake is taken in large quantities in the United States, but people are unfamiliar with it, as per ScienceDaily.

It is, nonetheless, quite popular in Europe, where it is known as the top eight most eaten species.

The top ten most consumed species in the United States account for 77% of total per person fish consumption, however, Pacific whiting is not one of them.

By looking into Pacific whiting, an assistant professor at Oregon State University's Seafood Research & Education Center in Astoria, Oregon, Jung Kwon is working to modify that and reduce the pressure on those ten species' stocks, which include salmon and tuna.

She researches marine species and their opportunity to increase human health, with a focus on the advantages of components of marine species like fish skin, which some Americans choose to dispose of it rather than eat.

Fish skins are indeed a plentiful resource with rich nutritional characteristics, according to Kwon.

However, they wanted to observe what additional value could be discovered in something that has historically been considered a byproduct.

Kwon and a group of researchers investigated molecular mechanisms that lead to skin wrinkling on a cell level in an article that has been published recently in the journal Marine Drugs.

Chronic exposure to UV light causes the collagen in the skin to break down and results in wrinkling of the skin.

The researchers collected gelatin using Pacific whiting fish and studied how it affected antioxidant and inflammatory reactions, as well as pathways that break down and promote collagen formation.

They discovered that the skin of Pacific whiting makes the collagen synthesis pathway, which had been inhibited by UV light, reactivated at a certain level.

Also, UV radiation had increased the collagen degradation pathway, which its activation has been blocked to a certain level.

The Skin of Pacific Whiting helps the additional antioxidant ability to increase. Antioxidants are chemicals that can slow down or prevent the cells to be damaged.

And lastly, Additional anti-inflammatory benefits were developed.

Kwon emphasized that these are preliminary findings from her lab using a human cell system model.

Animal models will be used in future studies.

With a positive reaction in the cell system model, they recognized some potential, she added, and this provides good proof to pursue those next steps.

Elaine Ballinger of Oregon State University and Seok Hee Han and Se-Young Choung of Kyung Hee University in South Korea are co-authors of the paper.

Pacific Seafood, a seafood harvester, processor, and distributor, supported the study.

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Management for Commercial Fishing of Pacific Whiting

The Pacific whiting is a ray-finned species found off the coasts of Canada and the U.S. This is a semi-pelagic schooling-living above the water, groundfish type.

A migratory coastal stock spanning from southern Baja California to Queen Charlotte Sound, a central-south Puget Sound stock, and a Strait of Georgia stock are the three stocks of Pacific whiting.

Since the latter supplies have fallen significantly, the coastal supply remains vast and healthy, and it is the Pacific Coast's most plentiful commercialized fish species.

Pacific whiting is a nocturnal predator that migrates up the water columns to feed at night and then descends during the day.

Under the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan, NOAA Fisheries and the Pacific Fishery Management Council oversee the Pacific whiting fishery on the West Coast in US federal waters (3 to 200 miles off the coast).

Under the authorities of the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and the Pacific Whiting Act of 2006, NOAA Fisheries published a final rule (83 FR 22401) for the 2018 Pacific whiting fishery on May 15, 2018.

This final order established the total authorized catch of Pacific whiting in the United States for 2018, a tribe allocated of 77,251 metric tons, a 1,500 metric ton select for research and bycatch, and stated the non-tribal Pacific whiting allocations for 2018.

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