A dilute fatty acid prevents precursor cells from becoming fat cells.
a) fibroblast precursor cells, b) fibroblasts treated with three chemicals that normally convert them to fat cells (shown in red), c) same as b), with prostaglandin F2alpha
Courtesy James Ntambi, department of biochemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
While the anti-fat signal leptin has grabbed the headlines, other chemicals are also showing early promise in the fight against flab. While leptin seems to signal the brain to stop eating, these other compounds prevent the fat cells from forming.
In plastic dishes, a series of natural and artificial chemicals
can shut down
the body's process for creating fat cells from fibroblast
cells.
Normally, the body makes fat cells to store energy when there is a surplus of carbohydrate and fat in the blood. But in 1995 University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemist James Ntambi found that a natural hormone (a prostaglandin called F2alpha) would prevent that conversion. Even in the presence of a tiny concentration of this acid, fibroblasts remained fibroblasts.
"If a prostaglandin called F2alpha was added, the process is shut off," Ntambi says. "They won't make a single fat cell," meaning that the animal would be unable to bulk out by making more fat cells.
Poor reception
Apparently, the no-fat chemicals interfere with a receptor on
the
fibroblast that would normally get a signal tellling it to differentiate
into
a fat cell.
In further work, Ntambi and graduate students David Casimir and Caroline Miller have found artificial chemicals that can shut down the fat-forming process at the minuscule concentrations -- levels akin to those used by other hormones. (For those who speak the jargon, we're talking one-trillionth molar.)
