Publication Date:
2004-12-18
Description:
Fat tissue produces a variety of secreted proteins (adipocytokines) with important roles in metabolism. We isolated a newly identified adipocytokine, visfatin, that is highly enriched in the visceral fat of both humans and mice and whose expression level in plasma increases during the development of obesity. Visfatin corresponds to a protein identified previously as pre-B cell colony-enhancing factor (PBEF), a 52-kilodalton cytokine expressed in lymphocytes. Visfatin exerted insulin-mimetic effects in cultured cells and lowered plasma glucose levels in mice. Mice heterozygous for a targeted mutation in the visfatin gene had modestly higher levels of plasma glucose relative to wild-type littermates. Surprisingly, visfatin binds to and activates the insulin receptor. Further study of visfatin's physiological role may lead to new insights into glucose homeostasis and/or new therapies for metabolic disorders such as diabetes.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Fukuhara, Atsunori -- Matsuda, Morihiro -- Nishizawa, Masako -- Segawa, Katsumori -- Tanaka, Masaki -- Kishimoto, Kae -- Matsuki, Yasushi -- Murakami, Mirei -- Ichisaka, Tomoko -- Murakami, Hiroko -- Watanabe, Eijiro -- Takagi, Toshiyuki -- Akiyoshi, Megumi -- Ohtsubo, Tsuguteru -- Kihara, Shinji -- Yamashita, Shizuya -- Makishima, Makoto -- Funahashi, Tohru -- Yamanaka, Shinya -- Hiramatsu, Ryuji -- Matsuzawa, Yuji -- Shimomura, Iichiro -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2005 Jan 21;307(5708):426-30. Epub 2004 Dec 16.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Medicine and Pathophysiology, Graduate School of Medicine, and Department of Organismal Biosystems, Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, 2-2 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15604363" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Adipocytes/drug effects/metabolism
;
Adipose Tissue/*metabolism
;
Animals
;
Binding Sites
;
Blood Glucose/analysis
;
Cell Line
;
Cells, Cultured
;
Cytokines/blood/genetics/*metabolism/pharmacology
;
Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2/metabolism
;
Dose-Response Relationship, Drug
;
Female
;
Gene Expression Profiling
;
Gene Expression Regulation/drug effects
;
Gene Targeting
;
Humans
;
Insulin/blood/*metabolism
;
Insulin Resistance
;
Male
;
Mice
;
Mice, Inbred C57BL
;
Mice, Obese
;
Molecular Mimicry
;
Muscle Cells/metabolism
;
Nicotinamide Phosphoribosyltransferase
;
Phosphorylation
;
Receptor, Insulin/metabolism
;
Recombinant Proteins/pharmacology
;
Signal Transduction
;
Subcutaneous Tissue
;
Viscera
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
Permalink
