Endocrine Abstracts

Binding of the gastric hormone ghrelin to its cognate receptor, GHS-R1a, is dependent upon the acylation of its third (serine) residue. Although acute exposure to ghrelin stimulates the secretion of growth hormone (a potent lipolytic signal), chronic exposure to ghrelin promotes fat deposition1.We have shown that in intra-abdominal depots, ghrelin-induced fat accumulation is depot-specific, time-dependent, due to lipid accumulation ...

Patterns of food consumption have a profound influence on hormone rhythmicity and fat storage, but until now only crude manipulations of food availability have been possible in rodents. We have used a CLAMS-based system in conjunction with automated serial blood sampling to investigate the effect of continuous feeding on ghrelin secretion and adiposity. Six-week old male Sprague–Dawley rats (n=6) were housed in metabolic cages and ad-libitum fed with standar...

Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by a lack of paternal gene expression from 15q11–q13 and is characterised by failure to thrive in infancy, followed by hyperphagia due to abnormal satiety responses and increased motivation by food. We investigated growth and metabolism a mouse model in which the imprinting centre (IC) of the homologous PWS interval has been deleted (PWS-IC mice). Growth retardation only emerged post-natally, with ad...

The pattern of food consumption has a profound influence on metabolic hormone secretion, but until recently only crude manipulations of feeding events have been possible in rodents. Using a CLAMS-based system to overcome this problem, we have investigated the effect of 3 weeks of grazing (consumption of 1/24th of the total daily food intake of ad libitum-fed controls every 30 min during the dark phase (18.00–06.00 h)) and meal feeding (three 1-h periods of ad...