title: Fifty years of radical ideas.
abstract: My role in the free radical theory of oxygen toxicity is discussed. Rebeca Gerschman and I published several papers on this subject. This sparked my interest in geochemistry and I developed the idea that oxygen was the best qualified biological potential energy source for the following reasons: great abundance, easily accessible, possession of a high thermodynamic potential, and its slow reaction rate. Ionization radiation can be viewed as a catalyst for reactive oxygen species since a killing dose imparts an infinitesimal small amount of energy. Next, Carol A. Colton and I showed that in the mammalian brain that stimulated microglia produce the superoxide radical anion and its implications in Alzheimer's disease is discussed. More recently, I have become interested in the role of sulfhydryl groups in transcription factors.
authors.affiliation: Unit on Reactive Oxygen Species, BNP, NINDS, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-4156, USA. dangil@helix.nih.gov
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Gilbert
mesh_terms: D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000266:history / Q000378:metabolism; D000818:Animals; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000378:metabolism; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D017382:Reactive Oxygen Species; D015290:Second Messenger Systems; D013569:Synapses / Q000378:metabolism; D014481:United States
chemical_list: D017382:Reactive Oxygen Species