2024-04-23 13:13:50
We start a new episode of Quilo vintage, in which we are going to talk about a truly impressive study, published in the journal Nature more than twenty years ago, in which hundreds of genes related to obesity were identified in an organism widely used in the laboratory, the little worm Caenorhabditis elegans, and I say little worm because this little animal measures about a millimeter and contains only about a thousand cells in its entire body. These worms are so small that they do not need a respiratory or circulatory system, since both oxygen and nutrients can diffuse to all the cells of their body without the need for those systems dedicated to distributing them. However, they do have digestive, nervous and reproductive systems. The simplicity of its body made it a model of choice to study the entire process of its development, from egg to adult. Today the entire process of its development is known from the first cell division of the fertilized egg to the last, and this worm has turned out to be of great importance for understanding how all the cells of animal organisms originate and are organized from an initial fertilized cell. .
Despite their small size, these worms can develop a disease as well known to us as obesity. For this reason, some researchers decided, more than two decades ago, to use this animal to try to identify genes that either increased the susceptibility to becoming obese or decreased this susceptibility. To do this, they used the then recent technique of RNA interference. As we know, the genetic information contained in DNA must first be copied into molecules of the so-called messenger RNA, which carries the genetic message to the ribosomes, the cellular organelles responsible for reading it and transforming it into proteins, in accordance with the genetic code. Well, the RNA interference or RNAi technique is based on the introduction into cells of RNAs that interfere with the reading process of messenger RNAs by ribosomes. Interfering RNAs can be designed with the appropriate interfering information to interfere with only one gene, so that the rest are not affected.
You can read here what was said more than four decades ago about the way in which a group of researchers identified hundreds of genes in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans whose functioning was related either to a protective effect against developing obesity or to a stimulating effect on accumulation. of fat that leads to that disease.
Despite being more than twenty years old, these studies maintain a surprising freshness and if I said that they had just been carried out, perhaps many would not be surprised. They do not yet have the appearance of being ancient science, far from it.
Research like these and many others carried out in recent years have made it possible to identify therapeutic targets for obesity. As you know, a therapeutic target is a target of activity of some type of drug that, by acting on said target, reverses the harmful effects that said target may have, or stimulates its beneficial effects.
Thanks, in fact, to the identification of these therapeutic targets for obesity, it has been possible to generate drugs that modulate them and that are today approved or in the process of approval by the American or European drug agency. The FDA and EMA, respectively.
It should not be surprising that anti-obesity drugs act on the activity of proteins or enzymes, produced by certain genes, that affect appetite, that is, calorie intake. It should also not be surprising that other types of medication act by increasing energy expenditure, for example, by burning fat without obtaining useful energy. Finally, the most recent and perhaps the most effective medications are those that act simultaneously on a decrease in appetite and on an increase in metabolism that increases energy expenditure. And obesity is nothing more than an imbalance between the calories that are ingested and those that are consumed in maintaining vital activity (such as heartbeat, breathing, etc., which accounts for the vast majority of calories). consumed,) and in carrying out daily activity or physical exercise (normally a much smaller amount of calories than those necessary to keep us alive each day, except in exceptional cases such as, for example, athletes who train for the marathon every day) .
However, medications that act by modulating appetite or energy expenditure are not the only ones effective against obesity. Other medications act, for example, by stimulating the elimination of glucose through the urine by affecting a transport protein for this substance in the kidney. Still another way to act to reduce the amount of calories that enter our body is to prevent their entry, that is, to avoid the absorption of fats through the intestine. This is achieved by inhibiting the activity of certain enzymes necessary for said absorption, so that, although we ingest fats with great appetite, they do not cross the intestinal wall and come out on the other side without pain and certainly without glory.
However, the existence of these medications on the market does not mean that the administration of all of them is safe. The list of anti-obesity drugs removed from the market is even longer than the list of anti-obesity drugs available today. Withdrawal from the market is usually decreed by drug agencies when more or less serious adverse side effects not detected in clinical trials appear, which, of course, are carried out with only a sample of the affected population. When it goes on the market, the drug can then be administered to the entire population and not just to a sample of it, and it is at that moment when hidden undesirable effects, if any, not identified in clinical trials, appear, which due to their severity. They advise the withdrawal of the medication that causes them from the market.
Research on obesity continues, and we are still far from being able to control it in all those people who may need it. However, controlling obesity is important since this disease is closely related to other serious diseases, such as the aforementioned diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases, which have a significant impact on shortening life expectancy. obese people suffer.
Jorge Laborda (04/23/2024)
Works by Jorge Laborda.
WE ARE SURROUNDED!
WE ARE SURROUNDED!
Your defenses against coronavirus
Your defenses against coronavirus
De-inflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
De-inflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
De-inflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Quilo de Ciencia Volume XII eBook
Quilo de Ciencia Volume XII Paper
Quilo de Ciencia Volume I. Jorge Laborda
Quilo de Ciencia Volume II. Jorge Laborda
Quilo de Ciencia Volume III. Jorge Laborda
Quilo de Ciencia Volume IV. Jorge Laborda
Quilo de Ciencia Volume V. Jorge Laborda
Quilo de Ciencia Volume VI. Jorge Laborda
Quilo de Ciencia Volume VII. Jorge Laborda
Quilo de Ciencia Volume VIII. Jorge Laborda
Quilo de Ciencia Volume IX. Jorge Laborda
Quilo de Ciencia Volume X. Jorge Laborda
Quilo de Ciencia Volume XI. Jorge Laborda
Matrix of homeopathy
Chained circumstances. Ed. Lulu
Chained circumstances. amazon
One Moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One Moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One Moon one civilization why the Moon tells us we are alone in the universe
The thousand and one bases of DNA and other scientific stories
Adenius Fidelius
The intelligence funnel and other essays
The gods have been cloned
#Cienciaes.com #Obese #worms #Science #Podcasts