Project description:Constant crosstalk between epigenetic regulators and metabolism homeostasis ensures that several tissues can respond and adapt to environmental cues. Decreased levels of the lysine acetyltransferase (KAT), MOF, was recently associated with cerebral development and syndromic intellectual disability. However, the consequences of having a chronic reduction of MOF levels are still unveiled. Here we characterized by FIA-MS/MS the metabolic profile of Mof heterozygous animals. We generated the profile of 8 different organs that have distinct metabolic demands. Overall, our analysis revealed that Mof heterozygous mice have impaired glucose homeostasis, fatty acids metabolism, and amino acid accumulation. When exposed ad libitum to high-fat diet those animals failed to gain fat mass, while the lean mass remains unalterable. At the molecular level, using the adipocyte model we found that Mof regulates the expression of PPARs and Slc2a4. In summary, we identified the first KAT that shows high-fat diet resistance and we propose that the chronic reduction of Mof impacts metabolic disorders.
Project description:Constant crosstalk between epigenetic regulators and metabolism homeostasis ensures that several tissues can respond and adapt to environmental cues. Decreased levels of the lysine acetyltransferase (KAT), MOF, was recently associated with cerebral development and syndromic intellectual disability. However, the consequences of having a chronic reduction of MOF levels are still unveiled. Here we characterized by FIA-MS/MS the metabolic profile of Mof heterozygous animals. We generated the profile of 7 different organs that have distinct metabolic demands. Overall our analysis reveled that Mof heterozygous mice have impaired glucose homeostasis, fatty acids metabolism, and amino acid accumulation. Furthermore, when exposed ad libitum to high-fat diet those animals failed to gain fat mass, while the lean mass remains unalterable. Accordingly, at the molecular level, using the adipocyte model we found that Mof regulates the expression of PPARs and Slc2a4. In summary, we identified the first KAT that shows high-fat diet resistance and we propose that the chronic reduction of Mof has a strong impact on metabolic disorders.
Project description:Haploinsufficiency, having only one functional copy of a gene, leads to a wide-range of human diseases. Using obesity as a disease model, we tested whether haploinsufficiency can be rescued by CRISPR-mediated activation (CRISPRa) of the normal allele. Haploinsufficiency of either SIM1 or MC4R, results in severe obesity in humans and mice. In transgenic mice, CRISPRa targeting of the Sim1 promoter or its ~270kb distant hypothalamic enhancer, rescued the obesity phenotype in Sim1 heterozygous mice. Interestingly, despite using a ubiquitous promoter for CRISPRa, Sim1 was upregulated only in tissues where the promoter or enhancer are active, suggesting that cis-regulatory elements can determine CRISPRa tissue-specificity. To evaluate the potential therapeutic use of CRISPRa, we injected CRISPRa-rAAV into the hypothalamus, leading to reversal of the obesity phenotype in Sim1 and Mc4r heterozygous mice. Our results show that CRISPRa can be developed as a gene regulation therapy (GRT) to treat altered gene dosage diseases.