过氧化物酶体脂肪酸β-氧化在多种脂代谢生化、生理过程中发挥重要作用，过氧化物酶体β-氧化紊乱导致人类神经组织和肾上腺组织的退行性疾病。但过氧化物酶体β-氧化缺陷在亚细胞水平上如何导致退行性病变还不清楚，新的生理功能还有待发现。我们课题组以模式动物线虫为材料，筛选并克隆到一个脂滴长大突变体drop-2，drop-2编码过氧化物酶体β-氧化第一步反应的脂酰辅酶A氧化酶。本申请课题力图确定DROP-2在过氧化物酶体β-氧化中的作用，鉴定其脂肪酸底物的选择性，测试其是否参与合成滞育信息激素，揭示其负调控脂滴长大的原理。

Peroxisomal fatty acid β-oxidation plays important roles in many biochemical and physiological processes of fat metabolism. Dysfunction of peroxisomal β-oxidation causes neural and adrenal degeneration diseases in humans. However, the cellular mechanism caused by peroxsiomal β-oxidation dysfunction and new physiological functions of peroxisomal β-oxidation remain to be identified. Our research group used C. elegans as a model system to have isolated and cloned a lipid droplet growth mutant, drop-2. drop-2 encodes one of the acyl-CoA oxidases (ACOX) for the first step of peroxisomal β-oxidation reaction. In this project, we plan to ascertain the role of DROP-2 in peroxisomal β-oxidation, identify its substrate specificity, test its effect on dauer pheromone synthesis, and uncover the mechanism by which it represses lipid droplet growth.