Interrupting the fat storage pipeline
We are programmed to store fat. That's great for staving off starvation but not so good when there's an overabundance of dietary fat as there is now. The obesity epidemic seen in developed countries is the predictable outcome.
Scientists have been seeking to disrupt the body's fat-storing mechanisms for many years. Now, working with mice they developed in conjunction with The Jackson Laboratory's classic C57BL/6J ("Black 6") mice, researchers may have found a fat absorption enzyme whose function can be disrupted with little or no apparent impact on normal calorie absorption. They reported their findings online in Nature Medicine on March 15, 2009.
A group led by Robert Farese, Jr., at the Gladstone Institute and University of California, San Francisco, have discovered that intestinal enzyme known as MGAT2 is crucial to the assimilation of dietary fat and accumulation of body fat in mice. They produced mice lacking MGAT2, which were protected against obesity, glucose intolerance and other health issues when fed a high fat diet. The mice absorbed dietary fat but at a reduced rate, and little fat was therefore stored in adipose tissue. Inhibition of MGAT2 may prove to be a useful strategy for treating obesity.
