CNAS Fall Public Lecture Series - FATS: The Good, The Bad and The Oily

Dr. Dean Cuebas, Professor, Department of Chemistry, will be the first speaker for the CNAS Fall Public Lecture Series - FATS: The Good, The Bad and The Oily.

Fats are familiar to everyone and constitute a subset of many of the fatty substances in life known as lipids, which all share the physical property of having very low solubility in water. Once thought of as the “oily junk” that needed to be removed from biological sources so that the important biomolecules (DNA, proteins, etc.) could be studied, lipids are now known to be an extremely important class of compounds that serve many diverse functions. Some examples of this diversity include energy storage and insulation (fats), biological membrane construction (phospholipids and cholesterol), Nature’s best detergent (bile acids), powerful hormone-like signal messaging (prostaglandins, leukotrienes, thromboxanes, etc.), protective coatings (waxes), steroid hormones, and the water-insoluble vitamins.

The above functions of lipids are essential for survival, but because of their extreme water insolubility, an excess of lipids due to either over consumption, or decreased breakdown, causes a myriad of disease states, some of which are due to genetic mutations that have been unraveled by the speaker. The “magical” benefit of fish oils, and adventitious introduction of trans fats into the human diet and their unquestionable negative effect on health will also be explored.

Free