Engineering the lipid emulsion interface to regulate lipolysis

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Obesity is a major health problem in the western world, and one of the key priorities outlined in the Government's recent White Paper Choosing Health. One of the problems is that people eat too much fatty food, even though they know that they should eat more healthily. This is mainly because they prefer the taste of the fatty food to low fat alternatives. Many processed foods contain emulsified fats which are broken down in the gut by an enzyme called lipase. The enzyme attaches itself the fat droplets and breaks the fat down into a form which the body can absorb. We know that if we can slow the breakdown of fat, so that some of it passes through to the lower small intestine, it can stimulate a loss in appetite, causing people to eat less in subsequent meals. We also know that certain lipids or fat-like molecules called glycolipids can slow down the breakdown of fat by lipase, and could therefore be used to reduce appetite. It is thought that these glycolipids prevent the enzyme from attaching to the droplet surface, preventing it from breaking down the fat within the droplet. Therefore we plan to use some naturally occurring glycolipids from plants (galactolipids) to see if we can slow down the breakdown of fats. We will develop model systems containing mixtures of components found in the stomach and small intestine following the consumption of a fatty meal. We will measure how much glycolipid will stay on the surface and how much that affects the activity of the lipase. These models will be used in a model gut system which simulates the action of the stomach and small intestine to see if we can really cause a significant reduction in the breakdown of fat. This may lead to the development of a whole range of foods specifically designed to reduce appetite by controlling the composition of molecules on the surface of fat droplets.