The Oxygen Paradox, oxidative stress, and ageing

Abstract

Professor Helmut Sies is being lauded in this special issue of Archives of Biochemistry & Biophysics, on the occasion of his retirement as Editor-in-Chief. There is no doubt that Helmut has exerted an enormously positive influence on this journal, the fields of Biochemistry & Biophysics in general, and the areas of free radical and redox biology & medicine in particular. Helmut Sies' many discoveries about peroxide metabolism, glutathione, glutathione peroxidases, singlet oxygen, carotenoids in general and lycopene in particular, and flavonoids, fill the pages of his more than 600 publications. In addition, he will forever be remembered for coining the term 'oxidative stress' that is so widely used (and sometimes abused) by most of his colleagues.

Keywords: Ageing; Carotenoids, flavenols, and flavonoids; Glutathione and glutathione peroxidase; Oxidative stress; Peroxynitrite and nitric xide; Singlet oxygen.

Fig. 1

The author (right) and Professor Helmut Sies (left) at a meeting in November 1999. The author has clearly been impressed by a comment of Prof. Sies. Lester Packer can (just) be seen in the background.

Fig. 2

Above we see Prof Enrique Cadenas (left), Helmut Sies, the author, and Prof. Giuseppe Poli (right) on October 3, 1996 in Barcelona, Spain, at the VIII Biennial Meeting of the International Society for Free Radical Research.

Fig. 3

Prof. Helmut Sies with Prof. Christine Winterbourn on November 20 2014 in Seattle, Washington, USA, at the annual Editorial Board meeting of the journal Free Radical Biology & Medicine. Both Profs. Sies and Winterbourn were inducted as members of the FRBM Distinguished Editorial Board at the meeting.