{"id":116684,"date":"2020-12-05T03:23:13","date_gmt":"2020-12-05T11:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/hidden-structure-found-in-essential-metabolic-machinery"},"modified":"2020-12-05T03:23:13","modified_gmt":"2020-12-05T11:23:13","slug":"hidden-structure-found-in-essential-metabolic-machinery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/hidden-structure-found-in-essential-metabolic-machinery","title":{"rendered":"Hidden structure found in essential metabolic machinery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/hidden-structure-found-in-essential-metabolic-machinery.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>**Peroxisomes are compartments where cells turn fatty molecules into energy and useful materials, like the myelin sheaths that protect nerve cells. In humans, peroxisome dysfunction has been linked to severe metabolic disorders, and peroxisomes may have wider significance for neurodegeneration, obesity, cancer and age-related disorders.**<\/p>\n<p>Peroxisomes are also highly conserved, from plants to yeast to humans, and Bartel said there are hints that these structures may be general features of peroxisomes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeroxisomes are a basic organelle that has been with eukaryotes for a very long time, and there have been observations across eukaryotes, often in particular mutants, where the peroxisomes are either bigger or less packed with proteins, and thus easier to visualize,\u201d she said. But people didn\u2019t necessarily pay attention to those observations because the enlarged peroxisomes resulted from known mutations.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers aren\u2019t sure what purpose is served by the subcompartments, but Wright has a hypothesis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you\u2019re talking about things like beta-oxidation, or metabolism of fats, you get to the point that the molecules don\u2019t want to be in water anymore,\u201d Wright said. \u201cWhen you think of a traditional kind of biochemical reaction, we just have a substrate floating around in the water environment of a cell\u2014the lumen\u2014and interacting with enzymes; that doesn\u2019t work so well if you\u2019ve got something that doesn\u2019t want to hang around in the water.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, if you\u2019re using these membranes to solubilize the water-insoluble metabolites, and allow better access to lumenal enzymes, it may represent a general strategy to more efficiently deal with that kind of metabolism,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Bartel said the discovery also provides a new context for understanding peroxisomal disorders.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/hidden-structure-found-in-essential-metabolic-machinery\">Continue reading \u201cHidden structure found in essential metabolic machinery\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>**Peroxisomes are compartments where cells turn fatty molecules into energy and useful materials, like the myelin sheaths that protect nerve cells. In humans, peroxisome dysfunction has been linked to severe metabolic disorders, and peroxisomes may have wider significance for neurodegeneration, obesity, cancer and age-related disorders.** Peroxisomes are also highly conserved, from plants to yeast to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":501,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/501"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}