Fat Gets A Makeover

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Fat Gets A Makeover

 

Body fat doesn't just, er, make you fat. It also acts as a

repository for all sorts of potentially nasty substances; like PCBs

and other environmental pollutants.

That's why rapidly shedding pounds isn't always a good idea, as a

whole slew of chemicals can be released back into the body,

potentially overwhelming the body's ability to deal with them.

 

While fat does a good job of sequestering away junk from the

environment, it appears that it may do even more important work in

keeping the body's own chemical cocktail in balance.

 

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), have

found that fat droplets - tiny balls of fat that exist in most

cells - appear to regulate excess proteins in the body.

 

Excess and misshapen proteins are the culprits in Mad Cow Disease

and are believed to be behind a number of other diseases.

 

 

The new study, published in Current Biology, found that the fat

keeps extra proteins out of the way until they are needed, so that

they don't cause harm within the cell. " We were surprised to find

that these droplets appear to be a mechanism for cleaning up excess

proteins before they cause trouble, " said UCI biologist Steven Gross.

 

 

Gross and his team used fruit flies in their experiments because of

strong similarities between the fat droplets in the flies and in

mammals. Using mass spectrometry to examine the droplets, they were

surprised to find histones (a protein that is used by the cell to

fold DNA within the nucleus) present. Even though histones appear to

serve no purpose outside the nucleus, the scientists found that 50

percent of all the histones present in the cell were in the fat

droplets.

Intriguingly, the amount of histones in the droplets dropped as the

embryo moved from early development to later stages, indicating that

the histones moved from the droplets to the nucleus as they were

needed. The researchers speculate that the fat droplets act as

a " warehouse " where the proteins are stored until needed by the

nucleus of the cell.

Gross hypothesizes that the fat droplets serve this purpose not just

for histones, but for other excess proteins as well.

 

" In prion diseases, such as Mad Cow Disease, for example, proteins

in the brain are misshapen, " Gross explained. " They become abnormal,

clump together and accumulate on brain tissue.

 

Although we have no evidence yet that fat droplets could help with

this, prion diseases are one area in which we can explore further to

see if these droplets are helping keep excess bothersome proteins

out of the way. "

 

 

Source: University of California, Irvine