Quickie for memorizing the Saturated and Unsaturated Fatty Acids

I knew this weeks ago, and somehow it left my brain, but came back fairly quickly, just like Lenny said it would. I sent Lenny the video that helped me with the Amino Acids and he was not impressed.

Lenny: " the problem with using other peoples memory tricks is that you wont have these tricks in med school and you need to develop your own tricks..."

And you know what? he's absolutely right. Brilliant genius man is always absolutely right. And he was right about this. So here's my trick for me to remember the Fatty Acids.

We have the Saturated fatty acids (the ones with no double bonds): Lauric, Myristic, Palmitic, Stearic, Arachidic
And we have the Unsaturated fatty acids (the ones with double bonds): Palmitoleic, Oleic, Linoleic, Linolenic, Arachidonic

Turns out, the Saturated Fatty Acids, when you take the first letters of all of them, you can say something like "Lenny Makes Public Service Announcements"

Since they all are lacking in double bonds, their "structure number thing" is # of Carbons:0

This is a weird ugly crooked photo but whatever. I just know that arachidic has 20 carbons, and I go bottom up, with even numbers, until I get to 12. So... 20:0, 18;0, etc etc.

Unsaturated Fatty Acids

I don't have any fun mnemonic devices for them, but I do have a system for remembering how many carbons, how many double bonds, and where the double bonds start from.

This system goes back to my beliefs that good things (usually) come in threes. So, for Arachidonic, we have to remember that there are 20 carbons. The next there going bottom-up are 18's (good things come in threes), and then Palmitoleic has 16. The number of double bonds (going bottom up), you have to remember that arachidonic has four, then you count backwards with 3,2,1 and then you put a 1 for palmitoleic because we're in unsaturated land and everyone needs a double bond.

For remembering the carbon from which the double bonds start... Go bottom up from arachidonic (there are three sixes in a row because good things come in threes), and then 7 for oleic, and then 9 for palmitoleic because 9 is a backwards P. 

YOU'RE WELCOME.

**Edit**

I just realized, I should have been a bit more specific about what the last column means. Know how you read about omega-3, omega-6 etc etc fatty acids? That last column is the "omega" number. It tells you on which carbon in the chain the double bond falls on. So.. Arachidonic Acid is 20:4:omega-6, and so on.

**2nd Edit**

If you still don't understand what I'm talking about, it's because I didn't really explain what fatty acids are, or what their structure looks like, but there's no time. Here's what arachidonic acid looks like, briefly:

So much for this being a "quickie"