Event

Program Overview

In September 1976, Ned Porter and coworkers published a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society entitled "The Formation of Cyclic Peroxides form Unsaturated Hydroperoxides: Models for Prostaglandin Biosynthesis". This paper was the first in a series on chemical mechanisms of lipid peroxidation from this group that continues to stimulate interest today. The kinetics of free radical chain oxidation had been worked out for simple chemical systems at the time, but little was known about the peroxidation of the important lipids present in plasma lipoproteins and membrane bilayer structures. This lecture will provide a mechanistic basis for understanding peroxidation mechanisms of important lipid classes that has emerged from research following the 1976 publication. The lipid classes described will include unsaturated fatty acids and esters along with cholesterol and its biosynthetic precursors. Knowledge of these fundamental chemical processes provides a framework for understanding important pathologies, including those related to the disruption of biological membranes and recessive human biosynthetic disorders.

Ned Porter, PhD

Ned Porter is Stevenson Professor emeritus and Research Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Vanderbilt University. He has received numerous awards for his research in free radical chemistry, including the A. C. Cope Fellow and James B. Conant Award in Physical Organic Chemistry form the American Chemical Society, along with the Ingold Prize from the Society of Chemistry. He is a Fellow of AAAS and the Americal Chemical Society and was a Senior Humboldt Awardee. He has published over 300 peer reviewed articles, many of which have focused on the mechanisms of free radical oxidation of important biological species.