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Fifty Years Ago
Author(s) -
Semenza Giorgio
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/s0014-5793(01)03198-2
Subject(s) - chemistry
For many years we have come to regard the reactions of the biological degradation, synthesis and transformation of fatty acids as `contained' in the kinetic and thermodynamic reactivity of thioesters. But it has not always been so. `Active acetate' had long been thought to be most likely acetyl-phosphate. It was in 1951 that Feodor (`Fitzi') Lynen's group reported that `active acetate' was the thioester of coenzyme A (Lynen, F., Reichert, E. and Rue¡, L., Ann. Chem. 574 (1951) 1^32). The history of this discovery is recounted most vividly by Lynen himself in the paragraphs that follow, which are taken from an autobiographic chapter that appeared a few years ago (F. Lynen, in: Slater, E.C., Jaenicke, R. and Semenza, G. (Eds.), Comprehensive Biochemistry, Vol. 38; Personal Recollections Vol. IV; Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1995; pp. 1^19). Giorgio Semenza Former Managing Editor