Molecular biologists have known for a long time that cells in the human body contain a number of molecules that play an active role in keeping them clean. This means that these substances act as vacuum cleaners, absorbing and breaking apart loose proteins, for example, and preventing them from damaging other molecular machines, or the genetic material inside the cellular nucleus. Now, a team of scientists looks closer at one such “vacuum cleaner,” in an investigation that could in the near future allow obesity researchers to come up with a new class of drugs aimed at fighting the condition.
The group, which is based at the US Department of Energy's (DOE)
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), looked at the molecular machine known as tripeptidyl peptidase II. The impressively-large enzyme plays an important part in cleaning up cells by destroying rogue proteins, and understanding it better could hold the key for curing obesity. According to the research team, without the actions of TPII, the cellular environment would become the perfect environment to support the development of mutations that would make the cell cancerous. Through its actions, the enzyme delays the onset of the disease consistently.
What the Berkeley Lab team did was basically look closely at the enzyme, and then piece together the images they collected at a molecular scale. The experts also observed the actions the molecular machine took as it prepared to rip apart a target protein. The reason why this molecule is so important for obesity research is the fact that one of its closest relatives has a nefarious influence on our bodies. That enzyme, located in the brain, is involved in making people feel hungry even after they've ate a plentiful meal, thus promoting the spread of obesity.
“We can now better understand how this very important enzyme carries out its work, which has not been described at a molecular scale until now,” says Berkeley Lab Life Sciences Division biophysicist Bing Jap. He was the leader of the investigation, which also included researchers from the University of California in Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, in Germany. Further details of the work appear online in the August 1 issue of the esteemed scientific journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.
The team goes on to explain that a variant of the TPII enzyme can have devastating consequence on the body. They say that the molecule is involved in degrading a hormone that is essential to making people feel satisfied after eating a meal. Without it, many individuals keep on eating and eating, thus becoming obese. Jap explains that the team is now looking into this enzyme even further. “We want to know how it’s regulated, how it selects proteins to degrade, and how it cuts them apart,” he concludes.
Find us on Google+
