Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: In rodents, dietary choline deficiency (CDD) results in macrovesicular hepatic steatosis and insulin sensitisation whereas methionine and choline deficient (MCDD) diets result in inflammatory fibrotic steatohepatitis with hepatic insulin resistance. The methyl donors choline and methionine are essential components of one-carbon metabolism. Our hypothesis was that methyl donor deficiency in mice would affect the expression of key genes in pathways of hepatic lipid...

The recent discovery of brown adipose tissue (BAT) in adult humans, which generates heat to maintain body temperature in a cold environment, offers an exciting new strategy to treat obesity and metabolic disease, but our knowledge of human BAT activation is limited. To identify novel pathways regulating human BAT, we undertook RNA sequencing of human brown and white adipocytes. The gene SLC6A4 (encoding the serotonin transporter SERT) was one of the most highly differ...