Scientists have found a way to burn those fat cells instead of storing them

Scientists have found a new way for stimulating the body to burn fat instead of storing it, a breakthrough that may help fight obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

In the study, researchers from the McGill University in Canada focus on a protein known as folliculin and its role in regulating the activity of fat cells.By knocking out the gene that produces folliculin in fat cells in mice, researchers triggered biomolecular signals that switched the cells from storing fat to burning it. This process is known as the 'browning' of fat cells.

Brown fat gets its colour from iron-rich mitochondria, an abundance of which is a sign that a cell is in metabolic overdrive. The principal role of brown fat is to burn energy to produce heat, which helps keep our body temperature constant. White fat serves as an energy-storage tissue.

Scientists recently discovered a new type of fat tissue with characteristics somewhere between healthy brown fat and the not-so-healthy white kind. So-called beige fat is capable of behaving like brown fat in response to certain stimuli such as exposure to cold. The more active these cells are, the less likely we are to accumulate unhealthy fat deposits that lead to obesity. Since the discovery of beige fat, the challenge has been to find ways to convert white fat cells into energy-burning beige ones.

"Conversion from white fat cells to beige or brown fat cells is a very desirable effect in the obesity, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome indications, since excess energy in the body is not stored in fat tissue but is burned in brown or beige fat tissue," said Arnim Pause, professor at McGill University.

The team bred mice to have fat cells that did not produce folliculin. They then fed normal mice and folliculin-deficient mice with a high-fat, junk food-like diet over 14 weeks. Normal mice gained weight rapidly, whereas folliculin-deficient mice remained slim and did not suffer the same elevated insulin and triglyceride levels. By measuring rates of oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production, the researchers found the folliculin-deficient mice were burning more fat.

At the end of the trial, these mice had smaller white fat cells and less white fat tissue overall. The extra energy they were producing made them better at tolerating cold temperatures, too. This breakthrough builds on existing knowledge about two key proteins - PGC-1a and ERRa - and their involvement in regulating mitochondria in fat cells.

Researchers found that removing folliculin gives the enzyme known as AMPK free rein to activate these proteins, boosting the number and work rate of the mitochondria in the fat cell. The result is a metabolic reprogramming of fat tissue, turning cells from fat storage units into fat burning engines.

The study was published in the journal Genes and Development.