Little-known protein appears to play important role in obesity and metabolic disease

Ava Chiang 

11/24/19

AP Biology

Current Event #9

Scripps Research Institute. "Little-known protein appears to play important role in obesity and metabolic disease: The recently discovered protein is normally abundant in fat; without it, the body struggles to manage glucose and insulin." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 20 November 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191120175618.htm>. 

In the article “Little-known protein appears to play important role in obesity and metabolic disease” published by the Scripps Research Institute, scientists discover a protein that is highly expressed in fat tissue. This discovery leads to new discoveries about obesity and metabolism, and may introduce new ways for addressing obesity related illnesses. This new protein is called PGRMC2 and had been detected in the uterus, liver, and other areas of the body. PGRMC2 is important because it encapsulates a molecule called heme, and transports it from the cell’s mitochondria to the nucleus, without this protective barrier PGRMC2 provides, heme would react with and destroy everything in its path. Heme is an iron containing molecule that travels within the cell to enable crucial processes such as cellular respiration, cell proliferation, cell death, and circadian rhythms. Enrique Saez, PhD, and his team centered their research around “what happens in the body if this protein doesn't exist to transport heme.” They discovered that wihtout PGRMC2 present in fat tissues, mice fed a high-fat diet became intolerant to glucose and insensitive to insulin, while obese-diabetic mice treated with a drug that activates their PGRMC2 levels show improvement with their symptoms. PGRMC2 levels are also high within brown fats, known as the good fats. A key role of brown fat is to generate heat to maintain body temperature, without PGRMC2, heme cannot function, and body temperature drops due to mitochondrial dysfunction.

Diabetes and other obesity related metabolic diseases are one of the most costly illnesses in the world, and its numbers are fast rising. In America alone, adult obesity rates exceed 35% in nine states. 30% in 31 states, and 25% in 48 states. The discovery of PGRMC2 can introduce a new way to reduce deaths caused by obesity and also improve the symptoms of it. The lack of PGRMC2 combined with a high-fat diet in mice shows the symptoms of diabetes, therefore, the addition of PGRMC2 could be the key to curing obesity. In addition, the protein (PGRMC2)  that helps transport heme, a molecule known to react and destroy anything in its path, had not been identified until now. So regardless of the future uses of PGRMC2, it is still a great scientific discovery.

This article was very interesting and informative, it included quotes from the leading scientists of this research and also explained the significance of this protein in detail. In addition, multiple examples of the types of experiments using PGRMC2 were provided. However, this article went straight into the deep end with this information, I felt like it would be more helpful to introduce the protein mentioned in this article, PGRMC2, by first talking about how it was discovered. In addition, there is no information in this article about when this discovery would be able to be used on humans, or if there were any negative effects on the mice from the drugs that increase PGRMC2 levels. If possible, I would like to see the author include more background information in the article.