HNF4 α in the Effects of Intermittent Fasting on the Liver

Intermittent fasting strategies such as alternate day fasting are known to be beneficial to health in humans and both health and longevity in animal models. A portion of this outcome likely stems from some degree of reduction in overall calorie intake, but animal studies in which calorie intake is consistent between control and intermittent fasting groups demonstrate that benefits still arise even when calories are not reduced. Lengthy enough periods of hunger likely trigger the same cellular maintenance mechanisms as play a role in the metabolic response to calorie restriction when practiced without fasting. The biochemistry of this response is enormously complex, however. Near everything in cellular metabolism is affected, often in different ways in different organs, and thus even after decades of research, the scientific community is still finding new mechanisms to explore. In experiments with mice, researchers identified how every-other-day fasting affected proteins in the liver, showing unexpected impact on fatty acid metabolism and the surprising role played by a master regulator protein that controls many biological pathways in the liver and other organs. In particular, the researchers found that the HNF4α protein, which regulates a large number of liver genes, plays a previously unknown role during intermittent fasting. "For the first time we showed that HNF4α is inhibited during intermittent fasting. This has downstream consequences, such as lowerin...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs