{"id":16911,"date":"2018-03-13T09:00:37","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T16:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vermont.salk.edu\/?post_type=disclosure&p=16911"},"modified":"2024-01-30T15:19:40","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T23:19:40","slug":"molecule-gives-energy-burning-brown-fat-identity-lead-drugs-obesity","status":"publish","type":"disclosure","link":"https:\/\/www.salk.edu\/zh\/news-release\/molecule-gives-energy-burning-brown-fat-identity-lead-drugs-obesity\/","title":{"rendered":"Molecule that gives energy-burning brown fat its identity could lead to drugs for obesity"},"content":{"rendered":"

LA JOLLA\u2014While most fat cells in the human body store energy, everyone has a small subset of brown fat cells that do the opposite\u2014burn energy and generate heat. Now, Salk researchers have discovered how the molecule ERR\u03b3 gives this \u201chealthier\u201d brown fat its energy-expending identity, making those cells ready to warm you up when you step into the cold, and potentially offering a new therapeutic target for diseases related to obesity.\u00a0The paper appears in Cell Reports<\/em><\/a> on March 13, 2018.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Infrared images indicate the much warmer temperatures of a normal mouse (left) compared to a mouse unable to make ERR gamma (right). <\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for a high-resolution image. <\/p>\n

Credite: Salk Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThis not only advances our understanding of how the body responds to cold, but could lead to new ways to control the amount of brown fat in the body, which has links to obesity, diabetes and fatty liver disease,\u201d says senior author\u00a0\u7f57\u7eb3\u5fb7\u00b7\u57c3\u6587\u65af<\/a>, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and holder of Salk\u2019s March of Dimes Chair in Molecular and Developmental Biology.<\/p>\n

Until about a decade ago, scientists thought that only babies\u2014who can\u2019t yet shiver to warm up\u2014had brown fat in their bodies. Studies have since shown that adults also have brown fat, albeit at much lower levels, and people with lower body mass indexes (BMIs) tend to have more of it. At a cellular level, brown fat cells are crammed full of energy-generating mitochondria, which give the cells their brown color.<\/p>\n

In the new work, Evans\u2019 group focused on estrogen-related receptor gamma (ERR\u03b3<\/em>), a gene that is active at high levels in brown fat cells.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were interested in what maintains brown fat, even when we\u2019re not exposed to cold all the time,\u201d says Maryam Ahmadian, a Salk research associate and first author of the new paper.<\/p>\n

The team found that brown fat cells express the ERR\u03b3<\/em> gene all the time (not just in response to cold) and that white fat cells do not express the gene at all. And by studying mice lacking the gene for ERR\u03b3 (and therefore unable to make the ERRy molecule), the team observed that all brown fat cells resembled white cells in these mice. Additionally, the animals were unable to maintain their body temperature when exposed to cold temperatures. While 80 percent of normal mice are able to handle a temperature drop, all mice lacking ERR\u03b3<\/em> did not tolerate the cold. However, there was no difference in the metabolism or weight of the mice. Together, the experiments reveal that ERR\u03b3<\/em> is key to helping brown fat maintain its identity and its ability to respond to cold.<\/p>\n

\"From
From left (front row): Ron Evans, Sandra Jacinto; (middle) Ruth Yu, Annette Atkins, Maryam Ahmadian; (back) Weiwei Fan, Michael Downes <\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for a high-resolution image.<\/p>\n

Credit: Salk Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since the ERR\u03b3<\/em> gene codes for a protein that can travel into the cell nucleus and directly control the expression of other genes, the team also probed which genes were mediated by ERR\u03b3 in brown fat cells. They pinpointed a number of genes already known to be important in brown fat, but which hadn\u2019t been specifically linked to ERR\u03b3 in<\/em> the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe uncovered the factors that are both involved in protection against the cold and underpin brown fat identity,\u201d says Michael Downes, a Salk senior scientist and co\u2013senior author of the paper.<\/p>\n

The group is planning future studies that look at the effect of activating ERR\u03b3<\/em> in white fat cells\u2014which they suspect could make some white fat resemble brown fat, and potentially help treat obesity and diabetes. They also want to study whether the role of ERR\u03b3<\/em> in the brown fat of humans is the same as what they\u2019ve observed in mice.<\/p>\n

Other researchers on the study were Sihao Liu, Nasun Hah, Weiwei Fan, Eiji Yoshihara, C. Daniel De Magalhaes Filho, Sandra Jacinto, Ruth Yu and Annette Atkins of the Salk Institute; Shannon Reilly, Andrew Gomex and Alan Saltiel of the University of California San Diego; Pooja Jha and Johan Auwerx of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne; and Christopher Liddle of the University of Sydney.<\/p>\n

The work and the researchers involved were supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, Ipsen\/Biomeasure, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, The Ellison Medical Foundation, a gift from Steven and Lisa Altman, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the UCSD Diabetes Research Center, the Chapman Foundation, the Velux Stiftung and the Swiss National Science Foundation.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","faculty":[91],"disease-research":[123,166],"class_list":["post-16911","disclosure","type-disclosure","status-publish","hentry","faculty-ronald-evans","disease-research-metabolism-and-diabetes","disease-research-obesity"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMolecule that gives energy-burning brown fat its identity could lead to drugs for obesity - Salk Institute for Biological Studies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.salk.edu\/zh\/news-release\/molecule-gives-energy-burning-brown-fat-identity-lead-drugs-obesity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"zh_CN\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Molecule that gives energy-burning brown fat its identity could lead to drugs for obesity - Salk Institute for Biological Studies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"LA JOLLA\u2014While most fat cells in the human body store energy, everyone has a small subset of brown fat cells that do the opposite\u2014burn energy and generate heat. 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