Endocrine Abstracts

Aims/objectives: Glycerol cycling plays an essential regulatory role in metabolism in both health and disease. Aquaporins (AQPs) are a recently described family of water transporting membrane proteins, which contain a subset of members that also have the ability to transport glycerol across the cell membrane. This study sought to investigate the adipose tissue expression profile of AQPs in humans, and to assess the role of AQPs in adipocyte differentiation.<p class="abstex...

Orexin-A and orexin-B orchestrate their diverse central and peripheral effects via two G-protein coupled receptors, orexin-1 receptor (OX1R) and OX2R, which activate multiple G-proteins. In many tissues, orexins activate MAPKs, however, the mechanism by which OX2R alone mediates MAPK activation is not understood. We studied the intracellular signaling mechanisms involved in OX2R-mediated ERK1/2 and p38 MAPK activation. In HEK-293 cells stably over-expressing recombi...

Visfatin is a controversial molecule secreted from adipose tissue and known to be positively correlated with body mass. Previous reports have suggested that visfatin interacts with the insulin receptor signalling pathway. Due to its high expression in visceral fat tissue and its initial reported insulin sensitising effects it has been suggested to be involved in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes, although this link has yet to be well established. Since insulin receptors are ...

Orexins mediate a variety of physiological processes including feeding behaviour, the circadian pathway and cortisol secretion. Steroidogenesis is regulated by a variety of neuropeptides and one of the key rate-limiting steps is cholesterol transport across the mitochondrial membrane by the steroidogenic acute regulatory (StAR) protein. StAR expression can be regulated through several different signalling pathways. Despite the clear link between orexins and steroid production,...

Orexin-A and orexin-B orchestrate their diverse central and peripheral effects via two G-protein coupled receptors, OX1R and OX2R, which activate multiple G-proteins. They are involved in a host of physiological processes including, steroidogenesis, appetite control and energy regulation. Whilst some signalling mechanisms have been proposed for individual recombinant orexin receptors in generic mammalian cell types, it is clear that the peripheral effects of orexin are spatial...