Discovery essential fatty acids

Holman RT. (1998). The slow discovery of the importance of omega 3 essential fatty acids in human health. J. Nutri. 128(2 8uppl), 4278-4338. 

Holman, R. T. (1988), Geoige O. Burr and the discovery of essential fatty acids. /. Nutr. 118, 535-540. 

Holman, R.T., (1998) The Slow Discovery of the Importance of co3 Essential Fatty Acids in Human Health, J. Nutr. 128,427-433. 

Very soon after the discovery of essential fatty acid phenomena in rats, medical researchers at the University of Minnesota began investigations on humans. The first medical phenomenon related to essential fatty acids was a dermatitis associated with intractable eczema. Hansen and his co-workers chose cases which did not respond to the usual treatments for eczema and gave these patients supplements of lard which contains approximately 10% of linoleic acid and a few percent of arachidonic acid (Hansen, 1937). They found that in the cases of intractable eczema the serum iodine number was low, and that when the diets were supplemented with lard, the iodine value rose to normal and the skin cleared up in 75% of the cases. An example of this disease which responded to essential fatty acids is shown in Figure 4 (Azerad Crupper, 1949). A study of the histological features of normal and essential fatty acid deficient human skin shown in Figure 5 indicates that in the deficient condition... 

Vitamins C, D and E were named in the order of their discovery. The name vitamin F was used at one time for what we now call the essential fatty acids (section 4.3.1.1) vitamin G was later found to be what was already known as vitamin B. Biotin is still sometimes called vitamin H. 

The determination of the structure of the prostaglandins led directly to the important discovery that naturally occurring 20-carbon unsubstituted co6-unsaturated fatty acids of the essential fatty acid group were the precursors of the prostaglandins. Thus dihomo-y-linolenic acid (all-ci.r-eicosa-8,11.14-trienoic acid), arachidonic acid (all-ci5-eicosa-S,8.11.14-tetraenoic acid) and all-cis-eioosa-... 

Rittenberg and Bloch showed in the late 1940s that acetate units are the building blocks of fatty acids. Their work, together with the discovery by Salih Wakil that bicarbonate is required for fatty acid biosynthesis, eventually made clear that this pathway involves synthesis of malonyl-CoA. The carboxylation of acetyl-CoA to form malonyl-CoA is essentially irreversible and is the committed step in the synthesis of fatty acids (Figure 25.2). The reaction is catalyzed by acetyl-CoA carboxylase, which contains a biotin prosthetic group. This carboxylase is the only enzyme of fatty acid synthesis in animals that is not part of the multienzyme complex called fatty acid synthase. 

Discovery of the essential nature of fatty acids in humans... 

Rapeseed. Attempts to change the fatty acid composition of rapeseed oil by plant breeding were stimulated by a report in 1956 that questioned the desirability of erucic acid in human nutrition (Stefansson, 1983). As a result of these efforts, Stefansson et al. (1961) reported the discovery of a line of rapeseed that was essentially free of erucate (low erucic acid rapeseed or LEAR, Table 4.3). Several closely related Brassica species are used to produce rapeseed oil. These include Brassica napus, Brassica campestris and Brassica juncea and crosses among them. The first erucate-free varieties were from B. napus, but B. campestris varieties free of erucic acid were also discovered later (Downey, 1 ). 

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