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Isoleucine or valine deprivation stimulates fat loss via increasing energy expenditure and regulating lipid metabolism in WAT

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Abstract

There has been a growing interest in controlling body weight by increasing dietary levels of leucine recently. By contrast, we have focused on studying the effect of deficiency of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) leucine on lipid metabolism. We previously have shown that mice fed a leucine-deficient diet for 7 days exhibit significant changes in lipid metabolism as demonstrated by suppressed lipogenesis in the liver and increased fat mobilization in white adipose tissue, the latter of which was found to be caused by increased lipolysis in WAT and uncoupling protein 1 expression in brown adipose tissue. The goal of our current study is to investigate whether the above effects of leucine deficiency can be generalized to the deficiency of other BCAAs including valine and isoleucine. In our current study, we show that valine or isoleucine deficiency has similar effects on reducing fat mass to leucine deprivation, in a similar manner as those observed during leucine deprivation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (973 Program 2009CB919001), National Natural Science Foundation (30871208 and 30890043), the Chief Scientist Program of Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIBS2008006), the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (08DJ1400601), 2010 Key Program of Clinical Research Center, Institute for Nutritional Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CRC2010005), Key Program of Shanghai Scientific and Technological Innovation Action Plan (10JC1416900). Dr. Feifan Guo was also supported by the One Hundred Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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  1. Key Laboratory of Nutrition and Metabolism, Institute for Nutritional Sciences, Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, The Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 294 Taiyuan Road, 200031, Shanghai, China

    Ying Du, Qingshu Meng, Qian Zhang & Feifan Guo

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  1. Ying Du
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  2. Qingshu Meng
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Correspondence to Feifan Guo.

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Du, Y., Meng, Q., Zhang, Q. et al. Isoleucine or valine deprivation stimulates fat loss via increasing energy expenditure and regulating lipid metabolism in WAT. Amino Acids 43, 725–734 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00726-011-1123-8

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