May 8, 2017 A live image of the liver of a translucent, larval zebrafish. It was taken using confocal microscopy, which allows for clear images of the internal organs of a whole live animal. Quinlivan fed a fluorescently tagged fatty acid to a larval zebrafish and then photographed its liver at 400x magnification. The round dots of varying sizes are lipid droplets, which contain a kind of fat called triglyceride. These triglycerides were constructed using the fluorescent fat consumed by the larval zebrafish. Fluorescence also shows up in the gallbladder (GB) and developing kidney (K). Credit: Vanessa Quinlivan

Studying how our bodies metabolize lipids such as fatty acids, triglycerides, and cholesterol can teach us about cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other health problems, as well as reveal basic cellular functions. But the process of studying what happens to lipids after being consumed has been both technologically difficult and expensive to accomplish until now.

New work from Carnegie's Steven Farber and his graduate student Vanessa Quinlivan debuts a method using fluorescent tagging to visualize and help measure lipids in real time as they are metabolized by living fish. Their work is published by the Journal of Lipid Research.

"Lipids play a vital role in cellular function, because they form the membranes that surround each cell and many of the structures inside of it," Quinlivan said. "They are also part of the crucial makeup of hormones such as estrogen and testosterone, which transmit messages between cells."

Unlike proteins, the recipes for different lipid-containing molecules are not precisely encoded by DNA sequences. A cell may receive a genetic signal to build a lipid for a certain cellular purpose, but the exact type may not be indicated with a high degree of specificity.

Instead, lipid molecules are built from an array of building blocks whose combinations can change depending on the type of food we eat. However, lipid compositions vary between cells and cellular structures within the same organism, so diet isn't the only factor determining which lipids are manufactured.

"Understanding the balancing act in what makes up our bodies' lipidsbetween availability based on what we're eating and genetic guidanceis very important to cell biologists," Farber explained. "There is growing evidence that these differences can affect wide arrays of cellular processes."

For example, omega-3 fatty acids, which are lipid building blocks found in foods like salmon and walnuts, are known to be especially good for heart and liver health. There is evidence that when people eat omega-3 fatty acids, the cellular membranes into which they are incorporated are less likely to overreact to signals from the immune system than membranes comprised of other kinds of lipids. This has an anti-inflammatory effect that could prevent heart or liver disease.

Farber and Quinlivan's method allowed them to delve into these kinds of connections. They were able to tag different kinds of lipids, feed them to live zebrafish, and then watch what the fish did with them.

"If we fed the fish a specific type of fat, our technique allowed us to determine into what molecules these lipids were reassembled after they were broken down in the small intestine and in which organs and cells these molecules ended up," Farber explained.

The tags they used were fluorescent. So Farber and Quinlivan and their team were actually able to see the fats that they fed their zebrafish glowing under the microscope as they were broken down and reassembled into new molecules in different organs. Further experiments allowed them to learn into what types of molecules the broken down fat components were incorporated.

"Being able to do microscopy and biochemistry in the same experiment made it easier to understand the biological meaning of our results," Quinlivan said. "We hope our method will allow us to make further breakthroughs in lipid biochemistry going forward."

Explore further: Link found between types of lipid metabolism and species lifespan

An international team of researchers has found a link between types of lipid metabolism in different species and differing lifespans. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the team describes their study ...

Two immune responses are important for recovery after a heart attackan acute inflammatory response that attracts leukocyte immune cells to remove dead tissue, followed by a resolving response that allows healing.

New work led by Carnegie's Steven Farber sheds light on how form follows function for intestinal cells responding to high-fat foods that are rich in cholesterol and triglycerides. Their findings are published in the Journal ...

As cells age and stop dividing, their fat content changes, along with the way they produce and break down fat and other molecules classified as lipids, according to a new University at Buffalo study.

A special spectrometry method that is normally used in analyses of computer chips, lacquers and metals has been further developed at the University of Gothenburg so that it can help researchers better detect harmful cells ...

Could controlling cell-membrane fat play a key role in turning off disease?

Plutonium has long been part of many countries' nuclear energy strategies, but scientists are still unlocking the mysteries behind this complicated element and seeing how they can use heavier, nuclear elements to clean up ...

A new process for water filtration using carbon dioxide consumes one thousand times less energy than conventional methods, scientific research published recently has shown.

Researchers from the University of Antwerp and KU Leuven (University of Leuven), Belgium, have developed a process that purifies air, and at the same time, generates power. The device must only be exposed to light in order ...

"Electrical" bacteria are the key ingredient in a new process developed by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory that recycles wastewater from biofuel production to generate hydrogen. The hydrogen can then ...

An international team of researchers from the University of Rome Tor Vergata and the University of Montreal has reported, in a paper published this week in Nature Communications, the design and synthesis of a nanoscale molecular ...

(Phys.org)A team of researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institut and ETH Zurich, both in Switzerland, has developed a one-step process that uses water to convert methane to methanol. In their paper published in the journal ...

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

See the original post here:
Scientists watch fat metabolism in live fish, observe real-time lipid biochemistry - Phys.Org