Circadian Clocks Play a Key Role in Fat Cell Growth - Neuroscience News

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Disruption of the circadian clocks that keep the body and its cells entrained to the 24-hour day-night cycle plays a critical role in weight gain, according to a pair of studies by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators.  .

8 in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, shows that fat cell precursors commit to becoming fat cells during the rest period of mice.

Teruel and her colleagues attached a red fluorescent protein to protein that controls the expression of important circadian clock genes and a yellow fluorescent protein to peroxisome proliferator activated receptor gamma (PPARG), a protein that regulates fat cell production.

They used these two fluorescent markers to monitor the daily fluctuations of PPARG and circadian gene expression in mouse fat cell precursors.

Once PPARG levels reach a certain threshold, the precursor cells commit to becoming fat cells, a process that takes a few days to complete. .

Another possibility might be therapies targeting the 4-hour window when fat cell precursors commit to becoming fat cells to prevent excess fat accumulation. .

“Every cell in our body has an intrinsic cell clock, just like the fat cells, and we have a master clock in our brain, which controls hormone secretion,” she said

“The circadian clock mediates daily bursts of cell differentiation by periodically restricting cell-differentiation commitment” by Mary Teruel et al

The circadian clock mediates daily bursts of cell differentiation by periodically restricting cell-differentiation commitment

Most mammalian cells have an intrinsic circadian clock that coordinates metabolic activity with the daily rest and wake cycle

The circadian clock is known to regulate cell differentiation, but how continuous daily oscillations of the internal clock can control a much longer, multiday differentiation process is not known

Here, we simultaneously monitor circadian clock and adipocyte-differentiation progression live in single cells

Daily gating occurs because cells irreversibly commit to differentiate within only a few hours, which is much faster than the rest phase and the overall multiday differentiation process

The daily bursts in differentiation commitment result from a differentiation-stimulus driven variable and slow increase in expression of PPARG, the master regulator of adipogenesis, overlaid with circadian boosts in PPARG expression driven by fast, clock-driven PPARG regulators such as CEBPA

Our finding of daily bursts in cell differentiation only during the circadian cycle phase corresponding to evening in humans is broadly relevant, given that most differentiating somatic cells are regulated by the circadian clock