Who would have thought that these cute little rodents will help us fight diabetes and obesity?
A massive breakthrough in the field of biochemistry was made at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Center. The research team discovered that an enzyme found in rats decreases sugar toxicity, a result that may one day lead to an effective treatment for obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The enzyme in question is a protein called glycerol 3-phosphate phosphatase, or G3PP, and it plays a major role in glucose or fat control and distribution in various organs. Up to this point, G3PP was thought to exist only in bacteria and plants, not in mammals, but the research team found traces of it in rats. It is the first newly discovered enzyme in mammals since the year of 1960, making its discovery a rather large breakthrough in the field to say the least.
Glycerol 3 phosphate is a product of glucose and an in excess can lead to an increased metabolism. But one must not think that this increased metabolic rate is beneficial because it can lead to severe tissue damage. G3PP functions by breaking down glycerol 3 phosphate into normal glycerol that gets processed by the pancreas without any side effects such as toxicity.
The excess glycerol 3 phosphate that gets produced after the cells process glucose gets eliminated from the cell by G3PP, allowing beta cells that produce insulin to continue their normal routine. If an excess is found, these beta cells get overwhelmed and the cell itself starts suffering, eventually leading to the onset of type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Although this enzyme has been found, a fact that might urge scientists to rewrite biochemistry textbooks from the ground up, its application in normal medicine is still a long way off. This stems from the fact that G3PP is not the sole element that leads to the decrease in sugar toxicity, being helped by other molecules that have not yet been entirely discovered.
Of course, once they get analyzed, clinical trials will be conducted upon animals before a supplement of G3PP will be even considered to become applicable to human patients. But if everything will go as planned, in just a couple of years a viable pill will hit the markets.
All of this research is made capable by our constant advancements in the field of genetics. Ideas that were previously considered to be unfathomable are now as easy to conduct as simply going down the street. This is not only limited to the field of genetics, with technology as a whole benefiting from breakthrough after breakthrough in an exponentially increasing manner.
Once this pill will become available, it will be the first of its kind. But for that to happen, the small activators of G3PP have to be discovered first, a fact that urged the Montreal team to make further inquiries on the subject at hand.
Although an enzyme found in rats decreases sugar toxicity, this does not mean that once a treatment has been discovered, people can indulge in excessive sugar consumption. This treatment is primarily aimed at people who suffer from metabolic dysfunctions, type 2 diabetes and obesity only. The effects on a healthy subject have not yet been considered, but they will probably undergo analysis once the team will find the G3PP cell activators.
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