{"id":27436,"date":"2016-07-01T15:48:18","date_gmt":"2016-07-01T22:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/researchers-identify-calorie-burning-pathway-in-fat-cells"},"modified":"2017-06-04T19:54:26","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T02:54:26","slug":"researchers-identify-calorie-burning-pathway-in-fat-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/researchers-identify-calorie-burning-pathway-in-fat-cells","title":{"rendered":"Researchers identify calorie-burning pathway in fat cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-identify-calorie-burning-pathway-in-fat-cells.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in collaboration with scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified a natural molecular pathway that enables cells to burn off calories as heat rather than store them as fat. This raises the possibility of a new approach to treating and preventing obesity, diabetes, and other obesity-linked metabolic disorders including cancer.<\/p>\n<p>Reporting in an online publication by the journal <i>Cell<\/i>, scientists led by Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, director of the Center for Energy Metabolism and Chronic Disease at Dana-Farber, and professor of cell biology and medicine at Harvard Medical School, discovered the mechanism in energy-burning brown and beige fat <a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cells<\/a> in mice. They identified an enzyme, PM20D1, which is secreted by the cells and triggers the production of compounds called N-acyl <a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/amino+acids\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">amino acids<\/a>. These N-acyl amino acids \u201cuncouple\u201d fat burning from other metabolic processes, allowing for <a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/weight+loss\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">weight loss<\/a>. Such \u201cuncouplers\u201d were known as synthetic chemicals but this is the first known natural small molecule with uncoupling activity.<\/p>\n<p>When they injected the N-acyl amino acids into obese mice which ate a high-fat diet, the researchers noted significant weight loss after eight days of treatment. The weight loss was entirely in fatty tissue.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2016-06-calorie-burning-pathway-fat-cells.html\">http:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2016&#45;06-calorie-burning-pathway-fat-cells.html<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in collaboration with scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified a natural molecular pathway that enables cells to burn off calories as heat rather than store them as fat. This raises the possibility of a new approach to treating and preventing obesity, diabetes, and other obesity-linked metabolic disorders [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1506],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27436","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\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27436"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67047,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27436\/revisions\/67047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}