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Inhibiting Monoacylglycerol Acyltransferase 1 Ameliorates Hepatic Metabolic Abnormalities, but not Inflammation and Injury in Mice

ABSTRACT: Abnormalities in hepatic lipid metabolism are believed to play a critical role in the etiology of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Monoacylglycerol acyltransferase (MGAT) enzymes convert monoacylglycerol to diacylglycerol, which is the penultimate step in one pathway for triacylglycerol (TAG) synthesis. Hepatic expression of Mogat1, which encodes an MGAT enzyme, is increased in the livers of mice with hepatic steatosis and knocking down Mogat1 improves insulin sensitivity, but whether increased MGAT activity plays a role in the etiology of NASH is unclear. To examine the effects of knocking down Mogat1 in the liver on the development of NASH, C57BL/6 mice were placed on a diet containing high levels of trans fatty acids, fructose, and cholesterol (HTF-C diet) or a low fat control diet for 4 weeks. Mice were then injected with antisense oligonucleotides (ASO) to knockdown Mogat1 or a scrambled ASO control for 12 weeks while remaining on diet. HTF-C diet caused glucose intolerance, hepatic steatosis, and induced hepatic gene expression markers of inflammation, macrophage infiltration, and stellate cell activation. Mogat1 ASO treatment, which suppressed Mogat1 expression in liver, attenuated weight gain, improved glucose tolerance, and decreased hepatic TAG content compared to control ASO-treated mice on HTF-C chow. However, Mogat1 ASO treatment did not reduce hepatic DAG, cholesterol, or free fatty acid content, improve histologic measures of liver injury, or reduce expression of markers of stellate cell activation, liver inflammation, and injury. In conclusion, inhibition of hepatic Mogat1 in HTF-C diet-fed mice improves glucose tolerance and hepatic TAG accumulation without attenuating liver inflammation and injury.

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE60349 | GEO | 2014/11/05

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA258077

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Background & Aims: Overnutrition is one of the major causes of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and its advanced form non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Besides the quantity of consumed calories, distinct dietary components are increasingly recognized as important contributor to the pathogenesis of NASH. We aimed to develop and characterize a hitherto missing murine model which resembles both the pathology and nutritional situation of NASH-patients in Western societies. Methods: We developed a NASH-inducing diet (ND) enriched with sucrose, cholesterol and a high concentration of fats rich in saturated fatty acids in a composition which mimics Western food. C57Bl6/N mice were fed with the ND or control chow for 12 weeks. Biochemical, real-time polymerase chain reaction, Western Blot and immunohistochemical analyses were performed to characterize systemic and hepatic changes induced by ND-feeding. Immunohistochemistry was used to assess c-Jun levels and activation in 110 human NAFLD and control liver specimens applying tissue micro array technology. Results: ND-fed mice showed significant body weight gain, impaired glucose tolerance, elevated fasting blood glucose levels as well as decreased adiponectin and increased leptin serum levels compared to control mice. In the liver, ND-feeding led to marked steatosis, enhanced cholesterol levels, distinct signs of oxidative stress, hepatocellular damage, inflammation, activation of hepatic stellate cells, and beginning fibrosis. Transcriptome-wide hepatic gene expression analysis comparing ND-fed mice and control mice indicated main alterations in lipid metabolism and inflammatory processes. Search for over-represented transcription factor target sites among the differentially expressed genes identified AP-1 as the most likely factor to cause the transcriptional changes in ND-livers. Combining differentially expressed gene and protein-protein interaction network analysis identified c-Jun (a component of the AP-1 complex) as hub in the largest connected deregulated sub-network in ND-livers. In accordance, ND-livers revealed c-Jun-phosphorylation and nuclear translocation. Moreover, hepatic c-Jun RNA and protein expression was enhanced in ND-fed compared to control mice. Also NAFLD-patients showed enhanced hepatic c-Jun levels, which correlated with inflammation, and notably, with the degree of hepatic steatosis. Conclusions: The new dietary mouse-model shows important pathological changes also found in human NASH and indicates c-jun/AP-1 activation as critical regulator of hepatic alterations. Abundance of c-jun in NAFLD likely facilitates development and progression of NASH, and thus, c-jun appears as attractive prognostic and therapeutic target of NAFLD progression. 14-weeks old male C57BL/6N mice were fed with either regular diet or a newly designed NASH-inducing diet for 12 weeks. Hepatic gene expression levels were measured thereafter.

Project description:Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), defined as fatty infiltration in >5% of hepatocytes (steatosis) in the absence of excessive alcohol consumption, is emerging as a leading cause of liver disease worldwide (1). Subjects with NAFLD have an increased risk of progressing into non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) as well as developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and liver cancer (2-4). Thus, understanding the pathobiology of NAFLD is of high medical relevance for the efficient prevention and treatment of a range of complex metabolic diseases. In NAFLD, excess lipids accumulate within intrahepatocellular lipid droplets (LDs), which are composed of a neutral lipid core of mainly triacylglycerol (TAG) and cholesterol esters surrounded by a phospholipid monolayer that harbors specific proteins. Once thought to be only inert energy storage depots, hepatic LDs are increasingly recognized as organelles that orchestrate liver lipid partitioning but also play a critical role in protein quality control and storage, cell signaling, and viral replication (5). Notably, LDs are shown to dynamically interact with a variety of cellular organelles including the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), mitochondria, peroxisomes, and endosomes (6). Liver LD surface-associated proteins regulate the functional properties of LDs, and dietary fat content as well as liver metabolic status have been shown to dynamically influence the composition of hepatic LD proteins (7, 8). Consequently, exploring how LD-associated proteins affect hepatic metabolism is important for understanding the molecular pathophysiology of NAFLD. In the search for novel targets that regulate ectopic lipid accumulation in the context of nutritional stress and obesity, we identified serine/threonine protein kinase (STK)25, a member of the Ste20 kinase superfamily (9), as a hepatic LD-associated protein, which critically controls the development and progression of NAFLD (10-15). We found that STK25 knockdown attenuates lipid deposition in human hepatocytes and mouse liver by repressing lipid synthesis and enhancing β-oxidation and very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL)-TAG secretion, with the reciprocal phenotype seen when STK25 protein is overexpressed (10-15). Notably, administration of hepatocyte-targeting GalNAc-conjugated Stk25 antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) in obese mice effectively ameliorates diet-induced hepatic steatosis as well as NASH features (i.e., liver inflammation, hepatocellular ballooning, and fibrosis), providing in vivo nonclinical proof-of-principle for the metabolic benefit of pharmacological STK25 inhibitors (15). Furthermore, we observed that STK25 levels in human liver biopsies correlate with the severity of NASH, and several common non-linked single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the human STK25 gene are associated with altered liver fat content (12-14). Although these studies suggest a key role for STK25 in the control of liver LD dynamics, the mechanism-of-action of STK25 in regulation of hepatic lipid partitioning has remained elusive. To provide novel insights into biological function of STK25 in the liver under steatotic conditions, we here characterized the hepatic LD-associated phosphoproteome in Stk25 knockout mice and their wild-type littermates following high-fat diet feeding using non-biased approach by isobaric tagging for relative quantification. Of the 4,515 proteins and 982 phosphoproteins identified with a 1% false discovery rate, we report a total of 131 proteins and 69 phosphoproteins that were differentially represented in STK25-deficient livers. Most notably, a number of proteins involved in peroxisomal function, antioxidant defense, and ubiquitination-mediated proteolysis were coordinately regulated in the livers from high-fat-fed Stk25-/- mice compared with wild-type controls.

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Inhibiting Monoacylglycerol Acyltransferase 1 Ameliorates Hepatic Metabolic Abnormalities, but not Inflammation and Injury in Mice

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