In this week's issue of the prestigious journal Nature Chemical Biology, scientists Carole Linster (University of Luxembourg), Emile Van Schaftingen (Louvain University), and Andrew D. Hanson (University of Florida, Gainesville) review an important, but so far neglected, part of metabolism, namely metabolite damage-control. In their publication 'Metabolite damage and its repair or pre-emption', the authors present a comprehensive overview of the known reactions generating unwanted small molecules in the cell as well as of the corresponding control mechanisms, and discuss the importance of this 'quality control' for cellular and organismal health.
"Damage-control in metabolism represents an entirely new concept, that shifts our view from linear metabolic pathways sustained by highly specific enzymes to more complex networks that take into account numerous damage and repair reactions", explains Dr. Carole Linster, a young group leader at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB), and hopes that her and others new research findings will lead to a change of paradigm in metabolism.