With a pair of papers describing the role for SIRT3 in diabetes and the metabolic syndrome published in the last week, a summary of these follows. The metabolic syndrome refers to a collection of metabolic abnormalities, including obesity, diabetes, increased blood lipids, and high blood pressure. The number of people with the metabolic syndrome is rising in the developed world and will lead to future increases in diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Sedentary lifestyles and high-fat “Western” diets contribute to the metabolic syndrome, however the cause is not fully understood. Thus, understanding the molecular mechanisms that cause it is critical public health problem. A genetic component is likely, and several genes have been implicated. Read More...

Tags: metabolism, metabolic syndrome, SIRT3, summary

DUKE SCIENTISTS HELP TO IDENTIFY KEY PROTEIN REGULATING DIABETES

DURHAM—August 18, 2011 -- With obesity and diabetes epidemic in the developed world, a better understanding of how metabolism is regulated is crucial. One of the key metabolic pathways regulating metabolism is the oxidation of fat. Scientists at Duke University Medical Center and the Sarah W. Stedman Nutrition and Metabolism Center, in collaboration with the Gladstone Institute and the University of California – San Francisco, helped to discover a new mechanism that governs this pathway and in the process identified a novel potential therapeutic target for controlling diabetes and obesity. The target is a protein from the mitochondria, or the “power plants” of every cell that are responsible for processing oxygen and converting substances from the foods we eat into energy for essential cell functions.

Tags: SIRT3, energy, metabolism, acetylation, high-fat diet

Burning the Fat

By Lev Osherovich, Senior Writer

A team led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco has identified sirtuin 3 as a critical regulator of fatty acid oxidation, a proc- ess by which the body burns fat.1 The findings have been licensed to the Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. unit of GlaxoSmithKline plc, which already has a discovery-stage program aimed at activating the enzyme to treat metabolic syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes. However, it could be challenging to pharmacologically activate the hard-to-reach mitochondrial protein in vivo.

Tags: SIRT3