Role of fatty acid chain length in energy balance and adaptive thermogenesis

食物中含有不同类型的脂肪。有些人认为，并不是所有的脂肪都是一样的，根据脂肪对身体的影响，脂肪有好有坏。对于脂肪通常在人体细胞中起什么作用，人们知之甚少。我们知道脂肪可以储存、燃烧、从体内的一个器官送到另一个器官，更重要的是，脂肪是构建细胞不同成分的重要“砖”。有趣的是，并不是所有的脂肪都有相同的大小，一些脂肪的长度比另一些长，我们认为脂肪种类的长度可能是脂肪是储存还是燃烧的重要决定因素。最好的研究器官是一种特殊类型的器官，称为棕色脂肪，存在于儿童和小动物中。这个器官既可以制造脂肪，也可以燃烧脂肪，因此它是研究脂肪长度对这两个过程影响的理想器官。为了研究脂肪长度，我们将研究Elov16的缺乏和/或过剩的影响，Elov16是一种将脂肪从12个碳水化合物延长到18个碳水化合物的分子。具体地说，我们打算调查：1)让脂肪变长是否会改变棕色脂肪器官的发育；b)消除/增加延长脂肪的能力是否会使动物变得更胖/更瘦；以及c)减少/更有能力放热。为此，我们将使用细胞和小鼠，在这些细胞和小鼠中，我们将减少或增加让脂肪变得更长的能力，然后使用非常新颖的技术研究这些动物产生的脂肪类型，这些技术使我们能够知道这些动物将拥有的所有类型的脂肪。这些信息将告诉我们哪些脂肪是好的，哪些是坏的，并将允许我们例如修改人类和动物的饮食，以确保他们拥有正确的脂肪类型以保持健康。

Food contains different types of fat. There are some suggestions that not all the fats are equal and that there is good and bad fat with respect to their effects in the body. Not too much is known about what fat normally does in the cells of the body. We know that fat can be stored, burned, been sent from one organ to another within the body and more importantly fat are important 'bricks' to build up the different components of the cells. Interestingly not all the fats have the same size, the length of some fats is longer than others and we think that the length of the fat species may be an important determinant whether fat is stored or burn. The best organ to study this is a special type of organ known as brown fat present in children and small animals. This organ can do both, making fat and burning fat so it is the ideal organ to investigate the effect of fat length on these two processes. To study fat length we will investigate the effect of lack and/or excess of Elovl6, a molecule that elongates fat from 12 carbons to 18 carbons. Specifically we propose to investigate: 1) if making fat longer can alter the development of the brown fat organ; b) whether eliminating/increasing the capacity of elongating fat makes the animals fatter/leaner and c) less/more capable of making heat. To that end we will use cells and mice in which we will decrease or increase the capacity to make fat longer and then study the type of fat these animals make using very novel techniques that allow us to know all the types of fats that these animals will have. This information will inform us about which fats are good and which ones are bad and will allow us, for example, to modify the diets of humans and animals to ensure that they have the right type of fats to remain healthy.