Here’s the big theory. Desaturase and cytochrome P450 enzymes in the ER compete for oxygen with the mitochondria. This is part of a switch to glycolysis that recycles the cytoplasmic NADH back to the NAD+ that glycolysis requires. If you’re going to do glycolysis, there is no need to allow oxygen into the mitochondria. Background
Linoleic Acid Is Stealing Your Oxygen Read More »
The fundamental biological role of linoleic acid is to act as an electron sink for cytoplasmic NADH to allow ongoing glycolysis. The fatty acid composition of the phospholipids from blood cell membranes have been reported many times in the literature. It is an easy thing to collect and quantify. We think of cell components as
Can You Stand In The Same Cell Membrane Twice? Read More »
I pace while I think. I’ve spent hours and days wandering around just thinking: what does PPARa do? PPARa sits at the crossroads of fatty acid composition, antioxidant defense, inflammation, obesity and torpor. As winter approaches animals increase production of PPARa. PPARa is a transcription factor (turns on other genes) that is hard to pin
PPARa Is A Filter Read More »
Let’s go back to our copepod friend. The one who swam down to the Oxygen Minimum Zone (OMZ) to fatten up. The truth is that she only spends her days down there. In the evenings, she comes up to the surface to graze on diatoms, which are a type of algae surrounded by glass shells.
Oxidative Fermentation Of Linoleic Acid Allows Glycolysis in Animals Read More »
NADH and NADPH are electron carriers. They are the “wires” that conduct electrical power through your cells. When they have the electrons they are the H version: NADH or NADPH. When the give off the electrons, they become NAD and NADP. They are interconvertible. NAD kinase converts NAD to NADP by adding a phosphate group
NADPH Is For Growth; Throw Out Your Antioxidants Read More »
So we’re getting back to why you shouldn’t eat seed oils. If I tried to explain it in a single post, it would be too much. Anabolism vs catabolism. Redox balance. How do cells allocate power to different pathways? What do PUFA have to do with any of this? If you want understanding you have
How PUFA Contributes to ROS Production (Part 1) Read More »
Where are we now? We are in a shallow sea. The time is seven hundred fifty million years ago. Ish. (750MYAish) There is no coffee, don’t bother looking. Land plants don’t exist yet. We have started to wriggle. Wriggling requires a left and right hand side. You need to be a bilaterian. Your FACE is
How We Handle Hypoxia Read More »
Cells in the first weeks of embryo growth are in a hypoxic enviroment and they are glycolytic. Glycolysis does not consume oxygen. As oxygen levels in the placenta slowly increase over the weeks, the cells rely more on mitochondrial oxidative metabolism. This is called oxidative phoshorylation or OxPhos because the process consumes oxygen and the
Glycolysis And OxPhos Read More »
When the clever mammals decided to grow the next generation in their placentas (except for the stupid monotremes), they remembered their copepod friends who vertically migrate to the Oxygen Minimum Zone so that they can fatten. If you want the fuel to build up you need to close the damper. An initiating event in pregnancy
Pregnancy Is Hypoxic Read More »
I’m a country boy and I grew up around woodstoves. If you want the fire to last all night – if you want the fuel to burn slowly – what you do is you close the damper to almost nothing. If you do that there will still be a half or three-quarter of the way
Fattening Is About Oxygen Read More »
In the early spring of 2024 I opened my front door and startled a very fat woodchuck, known as whistle pigs to some country types due to the fact that they are fat like pigs and make a whistling sound when they run, who for whatever reason was under my front steps. As I am
The Whistle Pig and the Hare: Fattening Is A Biological Choice Read More »
