fat-7 encodes an essential delta-9 fatty acid desaturase that is required for the synthesis of monounsaturated fatty acids; fat-7 can substitute for the functions of the other two fatty acid desaturases, fat-5 and fat-6; RNA interference has shown that fat-7 is required for viability and normal growth.
Enables stearoyl-CoA 9-desaturase activity. Involved in fatty acid biosynthetic process and post-embryonic development. Acts upstream of or within intracellular oxygen homeostasis and response to hypoxia. Predicted to be located in endoplasmic reticulum membrane. Expressed in intestinal cell. Human ortholog(s) of this gene implicated in autosomal dominant nonsyndromic deafness 79. Is an ortholog of human SCD (stearoyl-CoA desaturase) and SCD5 (stearoyl-CoA desaturase 5).
Map position created from combination of previous interpolated map position (based on known location of sequence) and allele information. Therefore this is not a genetic map position based on recombination frequencies or genetic experiments. This was done on advice of the CGC.