doi: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.108.172148
© 2008 American Heart Association, Inc.
Editorials |
Protein Carbonylation and Decarboylation
A New Twist to the Complex Response of Vascular Cells to Oxidative Stress
From the Institute of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Division of Cardiovascular Physiology, University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Correspondence to Dr Markus Hecker, Institute of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Division of Cardiovascular Physiology, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 326, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany. E-mail hecker@physiologie.uni-heidelberg.de
See related article, pages 310–318
Key Words: redox signaling • protein carbonylation • vascular smooth muscle cells • endothelin-1 • pulmonary hypertension
An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract. |
Although the Greek physician Galenos (129 to 216 AD) recognized early that ventilation of the lungs is important for the transfer of an unknown substance from the air into the blood, it took surprisingly long to discover that oxygen is a major "fuel" for our metabolism that oxidizes nutrients to generate chemical energy. Even William Harvey in his famous work about the circulatory system published in 1628 thought that respiration was necessary solely for cooling down the blood, ie, preventing it from burning. He explicitly disputed that the lungs are responsible for the transport of "spirit," a hypothetical substance thought to be essential for life.1 Not until 1788, shortly before his execution in the turmoil of the French revolution, the chemist Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier (who had discovered oxygen some 10 years before) stated " ... that is, respiratory gas exchange is a combustion, like that of a candle burning".2,3
However, apart from truly being the spirit of our life, oxygen is a rather harmful and dangerous compound that may be illustrated best by the fact that chemical reactions in which electrons are captured from a molecule are referred to as oxidations. In our body, biological macromolecules are effectively shielded from oxygen and oxygen-derived radicals by a multitude of both specific and nonspecific protective mechanisms, including uric acid, glutathione, the thioredoxins, or enzymes, including the superoxide dismutases or catalase, to name a few.4
Surprisingly, it was only 20 years ago or so when it was realized that molecular oxygen not
Related Article:
Circ. Res. 2008 102: 310-318.