M. I. Gurr – författare

Since 80% of the global production of oils and fats is consumed as food and a further 6% is eaten by animals to produce more human food, it is not surprising that nutrition is one of the active areas in lipid science. For 10 years, Mike Gurr has written nutrition articles in lipid technology amounting to nearly 60 reviews. The result is a powerful and critical survey of important aspects of lipid nutrition which will be appreciated by lipid technology readers and should be compulsory reading for those not familiar with the original articles.Areas covered include: influence of dietary fats on the concentrations of lipids carried in the blood and the significance for health, the nutritional and biological properties of the polyunsaturated fatty acids, and lipids in foods and raw materials, among other topics.

In the preface to the Second edition, we made a prediction that many exciting developments would take place in the coming years that would change the face of a new edition. This has indeed been the case and the current edition reflects these new advances. Our picture of the structure of the fatty acid synthetase has changed dramatically, bringing a new concept in enzymology - the multicatalytic polypeptide chain. This new knowledge owes much to the exploitation of genetic mutants, the use of which is undoubtedly going to extend into many other areas of lipid biochemistry. An understanding of the control of lipid metabolism has also advanced considerably during the last decade and we have tried to reflect that here, although it will be some years before a truly integrated picture can be obtained. For this reason we have continued to deal with the control of particular aspects of lipid metabolism - fatty acids, triacylglycerols, lipoprotein- in the specific chapters but we can foresee the time when a chapter on the overall integration of lipid metabolism will be appropriate and feasible. As a particular example, the exciting new concepts of the control of cholesterol metabolism in specific tissues via the interaction of low density lipoproteins with cell surface receptors have been described in Chapter 6.