title: The structure of mammalian fatty acid synthase turned back to front.
abstract: On page 1667 of this issue, Stuart Smith and colleagues [1] demonstrate that the animal fatty acid synthase is a head-to-head dimer rather than the head-to-tail dimer depicted in textbooks. This has important ramifications for the mechanisms of other multifunctional enzymes such as polyketide synthases [2].
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, University of Illinois, Urbana, 81801, USA.
authors.forename: John E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Cronan
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019281:Dimerization; D064429:Fatty Acid Synthases / Q000737:chemistry*; D008958:Models, Molecular; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats; D017384:Sequence Deletion
chemical_list: D064429:Fatty Acid Synthases