July 21, 2022 - The problem when something happens that you
thought it would never happen is not that something itself; it is
that you can no longer be confident it will not happen again.
July 18, 2022 - While surfing the web we stumbled across a
rather old but certainly accurate description of a disease whose
symptoms are easily recognizable:
nobelitis.
July 16, 2022 - Words that sound or are written similarly but
mean different things occur in all languages. In Spanish, for
example, we have filiación (affiliation) and afiliación
(signing up).
Funny things may happen when someone uses one instead of the other.
July 15, 2022 - Yesterday, Laura
Pereira successfully defended her PhD thesis titled "A lipidomic
study of the activation and maturation of dendritic cells. Roles of
arachidonic acid and the hexadecenoic fatty acid isomers." Congrats
to her for a superb performance.
July 8, 2022 - Current quotation #39. "Change always comes later
than we think it should" (Adm. Jean-Luc Picard, wise man
extraordinaire).
July 7, 2022 - Roles of hexadecenoic fatty acids in metabolic
diseases and cancer, coming soon to your favorite eicosanoid
library!
June 22, 2022 - Current Quotation #38: "May you find as much
peace as the relief you leave behind" (Spanish proverb). Sadly, the
future does not seem to look brighter.
June 14, 2022 - "That of the Spanish was always a long and
painful road to nowhere, marked by vileness and infamy.
Paradoxically, all of the greatness and brilliance of our history is
compatible with our miserable human condition; one is a complement
or consequence of the other, and vice versa" (Arturo Pérez-Reverte,
Spanish writer and journalist). Summer 2022 group meeting schedule
here.
June 10, 2022 - In a recent article in
Nature, adipose triacylglycerol lipase (ATGL) is identified as a
major candidate enzyme for the biosynthesis of branched fatty acid
esters of hydroxyfatty acids (FAHFA). According to the authors, ATGL
hydrolyzes triacylglycerol and transfers the resulting fatty acid to
a nearby hydroxyfatty acid. This results in FAHFA formation via a
direct transacylation reaction. Unexpected, to say the least.
May 30, 2022 - More on Mead acid. A recent study in
Cell Chemical Biology suggests that elongation/desaturation of
oleic acid to form Mead acid regulates ferroptosis-like signals that
restrict replication of hepatitis C virus in hepatocytes.
May 26, 2022 - Time for grant writing inevitably brings about
the issue of popularity versus excellence in scientific publishing.
Things have become so perverted that most policy makers can't
distinguish between both concepts. So here we go again to clarify:
vanity journals are primarily concerned with fashion - they have to
sell. With this we are not saying at all that vanity journals publish
bad or irrelevant science (though they frequently do), we just say
that there is a lot of excellent science being published in 'lesser'
journals which does not receive the respect or attention it
deserves.
May 5, 2022 - The latest installment of the specialized
pro-resolving mediator controversy (see March 9 entry) has reached
unexpected heights and is commented on in
Science. Best part, the last sentence: "no one expects an easy
resolution to this highly inflamed dispute."
April 29, 2022 - We just learned that the review paper we published in BBA in June 2019 (this
one) is the journal's most cited
article of the last three years. This is, obviously, a good
thing to note.
April 11, 2022 - Quotation #37 is actually two similar ones,
both from or attributed to Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor and
businessman. "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up; the most
certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time", and
"People are not remembered by the number of times they fail, but by
the number of times they succeed; and the number of times they
succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times they fail and
keep on trying. Every wrong step is another step forward.”
April 6, 2022 - An interesting study published in
Cells suggests that mice may retain cellular memories of
exposure to arachidonic acid across generations. In particular,
continued exposure of the animals to arachidonic acid increases
their content in 16:1n-9, which is quite reminiscent of our own data
showing the up-regulation of this fatty acid in arachidonate-treated
human monocytes.
April 1, 2022 - New insights into the interaction of cytosolic
phospholipase A2α
with membrane phosphoinositides. coming soon to your favorite
eicosanoid library!
March 29, 2022 - "Four things cannot be hidden for a long time:
scientific facts, stupidity, wealth, and poverty" (Ibn Rushd,
Averroes, Muslim Spanish philosopher). Spring 2022 group meeting schedule
here.
March 28, 2022 - 15-Hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (15-HETE) is
most often regarded as a lipoxygenase metabolite.
However, 15-HETE can also be produced at very significant quantities by cyclooxygenases.
Thus, before taking 15-HETE production as an indicator of
lipoxygenase activity in cells, it would be good to assess its levels in the
presence of a cyclooxygenase inhibitor.
March 24, 2022 - Another
study implicating secreted phospholipase A2
in the pathology of COVID-19. This time is not the group IIA enzyme,
but the group IID. The work is in mice, perhaps that makes the
difference.
March 17, 2022 - People often do not pay much attention to the
abbreviations list in a manuscript. Not a good idea if the author
has dedicated a lot of time in preparing it.
March 9, 2022 - The discovery of oxygenated products of
omega-3 fatty acids and their role as resolutory/ant-inflammatory
mediators was always received with much skepticism by the scientific
community. A
review just appearing in Frontiers in Pharmacology calls into
question much of the evidence gathered along the years regarding
specialized pro-resolving mediators. As this area of research is
tangential to our work we have no opinion on the subject, but the
review is indubitably a must read.
February 28, 2022 - Current Quotation #36: "Nothing can be
stolen from an empty place" (Spanish proverb). In Dylanian terms,
when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.
February 15, 2022 - We bring Mead acid (5,8,11-eicosatrienoic
acid) again to this section. It is a non-essential polyunsaturated
fatty acid of the n-9 series that, unusually, carries the name of
its discoverer, James F. Mead. Cultured cell lines are often found
to contain significant amounts of Mead acid. This is thought to
occur to compensate somehow for the low levels of polyunsaturated
fatty acids of the n-6 and n-3 series that cell lines exhibit. For
quick reference, here is our very
nice fatty acid list.
February 7, 2022 - María Zambrano was a writer and philosopher,
widely regarded as one the most brilliant minds of the 20th century
in Spain. She was awarded two of the most important literary prizes
in the Spanish-speaking world, the Cervantes Prize in 1981 and the
Prince of Asturias Prize in 1988, the first woman to receive both
recognitions. We welcome (back) David Balgoma as a
María Zambrano Fellow in the Biomedical Sciences.
January 31, 2022 - In the April issue of Nature Chemical
Biology,
Kagan and co-workers published a study demonstrating the key
role of group VIA calcium-independent phospholipase A2
(iPLA2β)
in averting ferroptosis by eliminating oxidized phospholipids that
act as ferroptotic signals. It seems like all the pieces of the
puzzle are finally coming together, and the actual biological roles
of iPLA2β
are finally coming to the spotlight. This is the paper we
distinguished as Paper of the Year 2021.
January 18, 2022 - Current Quotation #35: "I have learned not to
try to convince anyone. The work of convincing is an attempt to
colonize the other" (José Saramago, Portuguese writer, Nobel
Laureate in Literature 1998).
January 14, 2022 - We got
mentioned again in the Lipid Matters blog. This time in a kind
of different way, but hey, as we often say, free exposure is always
welcome.
January 13, 2022 - "It is not so much that I have confidence in
scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists
being wrong" (Isaac Asimov, American writer and biochemist). Winter 2022 group meeting schedule
here.
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