Biological implications of insulin resistance signalling, inflammation and extracellular matrix genes in human adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cell cultures

Abstract

El presente trabajo fue diseñado para determinar la posible función de los genes NPR3 y CAT en el metabolismo del adipocito, además para estudiar el mecanismo específico por el cual podrían contribuir a las alteraciones metabólicas asociadas a la obesidad en adipocitos humanos diferenciados.

The research group “CTS-461-Nutritional Biochemistry. Therapeutic implications, BioNIT” focuses one of its research fields on obesity. First, the group reported some studies of the association of genetic variants with childhood obesity such as 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (HSD11B1), neuropeptide Y (NPY) and fat mass and obesity (FTO) genes (PhD defended by Olza J. 2011) (Olza J et al. 2012). Subsequently, the research group studied the potential implications of SNPs for antioxidant defense system-related genes in the risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome features in children; a PhD thesis on that subject was defended by Rupérez AI (2014) (Rupérez et al. 2013, Rupérez et al. 2014). Additionally, the group demonstrated that VAT exhibits a differential gene expression between obese and normal-weight prepuberal children (Aguilera et al. 2015). Consequently, we obtained a grant by Junta de Andalucía (project number CTS-6770), which allowed for selecting some genes that may affect obesity and its metabolic complications such as inflammation and insulin resistance. Therefore, natriuretic peptide 3 (NPR3) and catalase (CAT) genes were selected among others to study the putative role on adipocyte metabolism and its possible association with obesity. The present work was undertaken to determine the putative function of NPR3 and CAT genes on adipocyte metabolism, as well to study the specific mechanisms which might contribute to metabolic alterations related to obesity in human differentiated adipocytes.