Engineering the lipid emulsion interface to regulate lipolysis

肥胖是西方世界的一个主要健康问题，也是政府最近的白色文件《选择健康》中概述的关键优先事项之一。其中一个问题是人们吃了太多的高脂肪食物，尽管他们知道他们应该吃得更健康。这主要是因为他们喜欢高脂肪食物的味道而不是低脂肪的替代品。许多加工食品含有乳化脂肪，这些脂肪在肠道中被一种称为脂肪酶的酶分解。这种酶附着在脂肪滴上，并将脂肪分解成身体可以吸收的形式。我们知道，如果我们能减缓脂肪的分解，使其中一些通过小肠下部，它可以刺激食欲不振，导致人们在随后的饭菜中吃得更少。我们还知道，某些脂质或称为糖脂的脂肪样分子可以减缓脂肪酶对脂肪的分解，因此可以用来降低食欲。据认为，这些糖脂防止酶附着在液滴表面，防止其分解液滴内的脂肪。因此，我们计划使用一些来自植物的天然糖脂（半乳糖脂）来看看是否可以减缓脂肪的分解。我们将开发模型系统，其中包含在食用脂肪餐后在胃和小肠中发现的成分的混合物。我们将测量有多少糖脂会留在表面上，以及这对脂肪酶的活性有多大影响。这些模型将用于模拟胃和小肠作用的肠道系统模型中，以观察我们是否真的能显著减少脂肪的分解。这可能会导致开发一系列专门设计的食物，通过控制脂肪滴表面分子的组成来降低食欲。

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.