Discovery of Mechanism that Switches Off Fat Production after Eating
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:
Discovery of mechanism that switches off fat production after eating:
A fascinating new study, published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications, is shedding light on a previously unknown mechanism by which a hormone released from the gut in the hours after eating effectively switches off the body's fat production processes. The research also found this regulatory mechanism is defective in obese mice and human patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
[...] A team led by Jongsook Kim Kemper from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found a gut hormone called FGF19 (or FGF15 in mice, hence the oft-used term FGF15/19) is produced in the hours after eating. FGF15/19 was seen to directly suppress the gene activity in the liver associated with lipogenesis.
[...] The new study also investigated FGF15/19 activity in human patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and in obese mice. In both instances the researchers identified significant abnormalities in this mechanism, finding the gut hormone ineffective in tamping down the gene activity necessary to effectively switch off lipogenesis.
"This study could be very important for understanding this pathway and investigating how it is abnormal in obesity and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease," says Kemper. "It adds to our understanding of obesity, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and other metabolic disorders. It also could have implications for other diseases such as diabetes or certain cancers, for which obesity is a risk factor."
[...] Source: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Journal Reference:
Young-Chae Kim, Sunmi Seok, Yang Zhang, et al. Intestinal FGF15/19 physiologically repress hepatic lipogenesis in the late fed-state by activating SHP and DNMT3A [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19803-9)
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