Scientists Find Brain Hormone That Triggers Fat Burning | Hacker News Reader

Scientists Find Brain Hormone That Triggers Fat Burning

scripps.edu

93 pointsbaalcat16 comments

Worth adding that finding is in worm brains.

I no longer get excited over such findings. Over the past 6 or 7 years I can't think of a single "discovery" that has changed anything medicine-wise.

Progress in medicine is very slow and that's concerning but it's not true at all that nothing has changed over that timeframe. Medication that cures Hepatitis C has become available in that timeframe for example.

I would be really shocked to see a hormone treatment to go from initial research discovery to full human trials in just 7 years, especially for something that's not an crucial medical issue like fat burning.

It's not crucial, no, but I can't think of a single other medical issue that people would be willing to pay boatloads of money to solve. Nobody wants to lose weight the old fashioned way. You can cut a gut in thirty days, no kidding. But most people don't have thirty days of willpower. They have plenty of money they would spend on a lazy alternative, though.

> Altogether, the newly discovered fat-burning pathway works like this: a neural circuit in the brain produces serotonin in response to sensory cues, such as food availability. This signals another set of neurons to begin producing FLP-7. FLP-7 then activates a receptor in intestinal cells, and the intestines begin turning fat into energy.

Correct me if I'm wrong but, what if I look at some juicy foods for hours - without eating any - would I burn fat this way?

Based on their description, it seems so, but what if your body builds an immunity to the effect over time? You could end up gaining weight long term or experiencing some sort of strange, painful side effects if your body eventually ceased producing or reacting to the hormone when it should. I wouldn't risk it until they study it more.

That sounds like torture - I'd rather be waterboarded!!

That being said, you raise an interesting point.

This is awesome finding. I was thinking about similar thing, how, if we didn't store energy as fat, but instead burn it... what kind of changes that would entail for us.

I imagined that while too much food would make you sick, in a lot of instances it would give you a lot of energy and it would be awesome if we could use more of the energy we collect.

It was just thought experiment, however I did read something later, that makes this whole idea not as great. Essentially it isn't as simple as burning all the energy. However increased rate would definitely be welcome.

If you burn whatever you eat immediately, you would die from heat stroke if you ate too much and from cold if you didn't eat for a few hours (sleeping would be a problem)

So, you need some store. Your liver now is the short-term store; it would have to become the only store. That means you would need a larger liver, much larger for those who are currently obese (anybody know the calories/kg values for glycogen vs body fat?). Death from cirrhosis and/or diabetes (if the liver gives up storing glycogen) probably would be the end result.

Storing excess energy in new muscles probably would be the best option in modern society (want to become more muscular? Drink more sugar drinks!), but our current genetic program doesn't do that (?because creating and breaking down muscles when energy is needed is too hard?)

> what kind of changes that would entail for us

Sadly I would suspect a "flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long" trade-off so premature aging and early death!

Uncoupling proteins (of which there are now 5 known types, up from one when I was a medical student 4 years ago) increase basal metabolic rate. The effect of increasing metabolic rate includes a raft of other metabolic changes (some of which may be because fat is an endocrine tissue by itself and so reducing visceral fat - which has a 'bad' endocrine profile - leads to a systemic improvement in 'healthy' endocrine signalling) that globally improve health.

Essentially exercise without exercising, so generally these are good discoveries - but we as yet haven't harnessed it in a useful (ie drug) form

That's agreeable.

One of the ways to get serotonin is by exercising -- so apart from calories burn (which is typically not that much in a normal work out), the benefits of serotonin can also help us. Great.

* Original article: http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14237

* This is research on nematodes (https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nematode), an organism that has all its 302 neurons mapped.

* The orthologues of the neuroendocrine peptide FLP-7 and its cognate NPR-22 are the tachykinin / neurokinin family.

* Tachykinin peptides are one of the largest families of neuropeptides https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Tachykinin_peptides.

* In "Neuropeptides: regulators of physiological processes (Strand), H15" some more background info can be found.

* Kinins form of a group of peptides that cause vasodilation, increase vascular permeability, cause hypotension, and introduce contraction of smooth muscle.

* The tachykinins (tachys, swift) evoke a sharp contraction of the smooth muscle of the gut.

* There are at least three types: Substance P, Neurokinin A, and Neurokinin B. The last two have been only discovered in the early 1980s.

* The genes are also called Tac(hykinin).

* Human tachykinin genes are called TAC1 and TAC3 and are equivalent to Tac1 and Tac2 of the mouse.

* Connection between Tac1 in mouse and adiposity is known https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4398763/

* Or Tachykinins and lipid metabolism in drosophila: http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247(14)0073...

* Here is where you can buy tachykinins: https://www.scbt.com/scbt/browse/chemicals-Nucleotides-Pepti...

* Note. As layman (I've only studied regulatory networks for the purpose of evo-devo algorithms) it is likely that diversification of neuropeptide function across the peripheral system (different functionality in heart vessels vs intestines e.g.) means that it is also likely that the evolutionary function has not been preserved.

* Note. Why do tachykinins have the right structure to play a role in this pathway?

* The study is still interesting because tachykinins are an "evolutionary preserved" family of peptide neurotransmitters.

when do we expect the commoditization of six-packs

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