AMPK tagged posts

Eating lots of fats increases the risk of metabolic disorders, but the mechanisms behind the problem have not been well understood. Now, University of California, Irvine biologists have made a key finding about how to ward off harmful effects caused by a high-fat diet. Their study appears in Nature Communications.

The UC Irvine research centered on a protein complex called AMPK, which senses the body’s nutrition and takes action to keep it balanced. For example, if AMPK detects that glucose is low, it can boost lipid breakdown to produce energy in its place...

Wataru Kimura and colleagues at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) in Japan have discovered how the hearts of newborn marsupials retain the ability to regenerate for several weeks. Using this knowledge, the team was able to repair mouse hearts that were damaged a week after birth. The findings, published in the journal Circulation, are expected to contribute to the development of regenerative heart medicines.

Heart disease is a leading cause of human death and is associated with numerous other secondary illnesses. For humans and other mammals, damaged heart muscle—such as occurs after a heart attack—cannot be naturally repaired because matured heart-muscle cells do not regenerate...

Enzyme with central role in cancer and type 2 diabetes also activates. Researchers have discovered a direct link between a master sensor of cell stress and a protein that protects the power stations of cells. The same pathway is also tied to type 2 diabetes and cancer, which could open a new avenue for treating all three diseases.

When cells are stressed, chemical alarms go off, setting in motion a flurry of activity that protects the cell’s most important players. During the rush, a protein called Parkin hurries to protect the mitochondria, the power stations that generate energy for the cell. Now Salk researchers have discovered a direct link between a master sensor of cell stress and Parkin itself...

Effects of hepatic Ago2-deficiency on MD-miRNA expression in the liver

New treatment for a major health problem? Obesity and its related ailments like type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease pose a major global health burden, but researchers report in Nature Communications that blocking an RNA-silencing protein in the livers of mice keeps the animals from getting fat and diabetic conditions.

Takahisa Nakamura, PhD, and colleagues at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center genetically deleted a protein called Argonaute 2 (Ago2) from the livers of mice. Ago2 controls the silencing of RNA in cells, affecting energy metabolism in the body, according to the study...