William E.M. Lands (born July 22, 1930) is an American nutritional biochemist who is among the world's foremost authorities on

essential fatty acid Essential fatty acids, or EFAs, are fatty acids that humans and other animals must ingest because the body requires them for good health but cannot synthesize them. Only two fatty acids are known to be essential for humans: alpha-linolenic ac ...

Biography

Lands graduated from

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1951 and served on the faculty there from 1955 to 1980. He then moved to

University of Illinois Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois sy ...

(1980–1990) and subsequently the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

(1990–2002), where he served as the senior scientific advisor to the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. He was named a Fellow by the American Society for Nutrition, Society for Redox Biology and Medicine, International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Lands is credited for discovering the beneficial effects of balancing the effects of excess omega-6 fatty acids with dietary

omega-3 fatty acid Omega−3 fatty acids, also called Omega-3 oils, ω−3 fatty acids or ''n''−3 fatty acids, are polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) characterized by the presence of a double bond, three atoms away from the terminal methyl group in their chem ...

s. The effect of essential fatty acids on formation of hormones is documented in his book, "Fish, Omega-3 and Human Health" and i
interviews for the lay public
University of Michigan's Department of Biological Chemistry endowed a "Lectureship on the Biochemical Basis for the Physiology of Essential Nutrients" in honor of William E.M. Lands. Upon receipt of a Pfizer Biomedical Research Award in 1985, Lands developed an empirical mathematical relationship showing how metabolism of dietary omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids leads to predictable proportions of their elongated highly unsaturated derivatives (HUFA) accumulated in tissue lipids. After retirement, he changed from publishing as William E.M. Lands to Bill Lands as he put increased attention to primary prevention of health disorders related to excessive actions of omega-6 mediators and describing consequences of imbalanced dietary intakes of omega-3 and omega-6 nutrients. More recently, Lands described an Omega 3-6 Balance Score that indicates the likely impact of individual food items on the balance of HUFA accumulated in tissues. Lands emphasized that efficient conversion of linoleic acid (18:2n-6) to the n-6 highly unsaturated fatty acid (n-6HUFA), arachidonic acid (20:4n-6), competitively displaces n-3 HUFA from tissue phospholipids and creates a narrow therapeutic window for dietary linoleic in the absence of n-3 nutrients. The HUFA balance seen with a finger-tip blood-spot assay monitors dietary intakes of essential fatty acids and predicts the likely intensity of n-6 eicosanoid-mediated pathophysiology. He was a science advisor for the seafood and omega 3 supplement company ''Vital Choice''. He held a position as director at the Omega Protein Corporation that provides omega-3 rich fish oil for the supplement industry. A company that he also held shares in.

Lectures

Lands Lecturers have included: *2005 Hee Young Kim from NIAAA on essentiality of docosahexaenoic acid in the brain *2006 James C. Fleet from

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...

on molecular actions of Vitamin D *2007 Charles Brenner from

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 col ...

on discovery of new regulated steps in NAD metabolism *2008 Christopher J. Frederickson from

University of Texas Medical Branch The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) is a public academic health science center in Galveston, Texas. It is part of the University of Texas System. UTMB includes the oldest medical school in Texas, and has about 11,000 employees. In Febr ...

zinc Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...

secreting cells *2009 Richard Wurtman from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

on nutrition and synapse health *2010 Patrick J. Stover from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

on folate-genome interactions *2011 Vadim Gladyshev from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

on selenium and redox biology *2012 Noa Noy from Case Western Reserve University on retinoic acid signaling in metabolic diseases *2013 Bruce Hammock from

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

on omega-3 fatty acids and cancer *2014 Andrew Dannenberg from

Weill Medical College The Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University is Cornell University's biomedical research unit and medical school located in Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York. Weill Cornell Medicine is affiliated with NewY ...

on adipose inflammation and breast cancer *2015

Alan Brash Alan Anderson Brash (5 June 1913 – 24 August 2002) was a leading minister of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, and of the worldwide ecumenical movement. He was the son of notable Presbyterian lay leader Thomas Brash, and the ...

from

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

on arachidonic acid metabolites and their role in pathophysiological processes *2016 David Sabatini from the

Whitehead Institute Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a non-profit research institute located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States that is dedicated to improving human health through basic biomedical research. It was founded as a fiscally indepen ...

on amino acid sensing mechanisms *2017 Robert Farese, Jr from

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

on fat synthesis and storage in lipid droplets *2018 Steven Kliewer from Texas Southwestern Medical Center on metabolic stress hormone FGF21 *2019 Peter Tontonoz from

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

on physiological roles of phospholipid remodeling by LPCAT3 *2020 Jean Schaffer from

on metabolic programming mediated by small nucleolar RNAs *2021 Patrick O. Brown from Stanford University and

Impossible Foods Impossible Foods Inc. is a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products. The company's signature product, the Impossible Burger, was launched in July 2016. In partnership with Burger King, Impossible Whoppers were released ...

on plant-based meats

Classics Reprints in Biological Chemistry

The editors of The Journal of Biological Chemistry named his 1958 paper icole Kresge, Robert D. Simoni, and Robert L. Hill, Journal of Biological Chemistry Classics, v. 284, p. e3, 2009. https://www.jbc.org/article/S0021-9258(20)58250-1/pdfas a "Classic" and published a "Reflections" overview of his work in 2011 Lands, B. Everything Is Connected to Everything Else. The Journal of Biological Chemistry 286, 43589-43595. http://www.jbc.org/content/286/51/43589

Selected publications

*''Fish and Human Health'' (1986) *''Fish, Omega-3 and Human Health, Second Edition'' (2005)

Website

* https://efaeducation.org/

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lands, William E.M. 1930 births American biochemists American nutritionists Living people University of Michigan alumni University of Michigan faculty University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty