Tonight on #MitoMonday we briefly highlight the life & works of one of the greatest biochemists of all time, Argentine @NobelPrize laureate Dr. Luis Federico Leloir, #LateNightWithTheRutterLab #BiochemGOAT 
Dr. Leloir was born in Paris in 1906. His father passed away due to an illness a wk before his birth. 2 yrs later the family moved back to Argentina. Eventually he enrolled in the school of medicine @UBAonline. 2/
He earned his MD in 1932 & worked at the university hospital for 2 years. Dissatisfied with his work, he pursued & earned a PhD in 1936 from Dr. Bernardo Houssay’s lab, who would go on to share the @NobelPrize with the Coris in 1947. 3/
Interesting fact #1: Dr. Leloir is credited to being the inventor of “salsa golf” a condiment made by combining ketchup with mayonnaise to eat alongside seafood. He wd joke, "If I had patented that sauce, we'd have a lot more money for research right now." #FrySauce 4/
Dr. Leloir moved to @Cambridge_Uni in 1936 & worked on the effect of cyanide & pyrophosphate on succinic acid dehydrogenase, ketogenesis using liver slices, & on the purification and properties of B-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase. bit.ly/2FpWJ8v bit.ly/2SXbBD1 5/
Most [of my experiments] failed but a few succeeded either due to pure good luck or to having made the right mistake." - Luis F. Leloir, 1970. 6/
Dr Leloir returned to Argentina, & began studying the oxidation of fatty acids in the liver w/ Dr. Munoz. He succeeded where others had failed by showing that this oxidation requires the concomitant operation of the TCA cycle. bit.ly/2ZVyuZ6 bit.ly/37Gzt1V 7/
Dr. Leloir also worked on the mechanism of renal hypertension & the formation of angiotensin. bit.ly/2ZWw9gx In 1943, political unrest forced Dr. Leloir to flee to the USA & split his time between Dr. Carl Cori's lab @WUSTL and Dr. David Green's lab @Columbia 8/
In 1945 Dr. Leloir returned to Argentina to work w/ Dr. Houssay @fundacionleloir institute. Despite meager financial resources, Dr. Leloir wd begin his work on galactose metabolism (Leloir Pathway) and the identification of sugar nucleotides here. 9/
Interesting Fact#2: Dr. Leloir's lab worked under ‘‘Leloir’s First Law’’: number of tubes x ideas = constant. This meant if you had many good ideas the number of test tubes to obtain good results would be small, ... 10/
...while if good ideas were rather scarce the amount of test tubes would have to increase so as to obtain a result worth publishing. It was very common to see him performing his experiments using only two tubes: the test and the control one. #Baller 11/
Dr. Leloir isolated glucose 1,6-diphosphate & Uridine diphosphate glucose (UDPG), & determined that UDPG was a glucose donor in the synthesis of trehalose, sucrose, & glycogen. go.nature.com/36x9V7f bit.ly/37NN0VH bit.ly/2ZYzg7u bit.ly/2SZtnFH 12/
Interesting Fact #3: Jaime Campomar, the generous donor who funded the @fundacionleloir institute, died in 1956, which left the institute with no funding. Dr. Leloir considered closing down the institute, but a grant from the @NIH saved the day. 13/
In 1957, Dr Leloir and Dr Cardini discovered an enzyme in liver that catalyzed glycogen synthesis from UDPG, glycogen synthase. bit.ly/2QxiRnM mutations in this gene are associated with glycogen storage disease. 14/
On October 29 1970 Dr. Leloir was awarded the @NobelPrize in Chemistry "for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates." 15/
‘‘one thing I have always tried to avoid is working on subjects that have already drawn other researchers’ interest. Young scientists tend to become fascinated with subjects that are in fashion and decide to focus their work on them... 16/
...By the time they become experts those subjects themselves may already be running out of fashion, or what is worse, they may have become the subject of fierce competition. This whole situation reminds me of the times when I played polo in my youth... 17/
...The older, more experienced players would always advise me not to ride after the ball itself, for once one reached it, it was already too late. The wise thing to do, they kept telling me, was to ride straight to where one thought the ball will end up... 18/
...There is a slight time difference between both tactics, and in sports strategy is truly learnt only by experience. When dealing with science, I guess the right strategy is to follow the results from experiments rather than those from literature.’’ Luis Leloir #MitoMonday 19/19
