When lipid biologist Usha Acharya at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) tinkered with lipid breakdown pathways in Drosophila melanogaster, she observed something intriguing. Blocking a biochemical reaction led to a lipid molecule accumulating to levels high enough to activate stress responses in the flies. Despite this, the insects survived.

While exploring how the flies adapted to such conditions, Acharya found increased levels of an enzyme—CG8093—in their guts. Now, her team has identified that the lipase is synthesized in the gut of Drosophila. In response to fatty foods, it travels from the gut to the brain to influence insulin production. The results, published in Nature Communications, describe a molecular link between dietary fat and insulin secretion in the brain.

To investigate CG8093, Usha Acharya’s team generated a fly line that expressed a green fluorescent protein-tagged version of the molecule in the gut. Using fluorescence microscopy, they tracked the glowing molecule all the way to the brain, where it was abundantly expressed in the pars intercerebralis, a region that contains insulin-producing cells. When the researchers analyzed gene expression maps of CG8093, they observed negligible levels in the brain and central nervous system compared to the gut, suggesting that CG8093 was synthesized in the gut before moving into the brain. The tradition of naming Drosophila genes after their functions inspired Usha Acharya to call the enzyme Vaha.

Eventually, the research team would like to advance their experiments into organoids to test for an inter-organ crosstalk, said Usha Acharya. “But that will take us some time.”

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Article cited from The Scientist