| First Author | Liu Y | Year | 2018 |
| Journal | Nat Commun | Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 1 | Pages | 2751 |
| PubMed ID | 30013137 | Mgi Jnum | J:266492 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:6209283 | Doi | 10.1038/s41467-018-05309-y |
| Citation | Liu Y, et al. (2018) Insulin/Snail1 axis ameliorates fatty liver disease by epigenetically suppressing lipogenesis. Nat Commun 9(1):2751 |
| abstractText | Insulin stimulates lipogenesis but insulin resistance is also associated with increased hepatic lipogenesis in obesity. However, the underlying mechanism remains poorly characterized. Here, we show a noncanonical insulin-Snail1 pathway that suppresses lipogenesis. Insulin robustly upregulates zinc-finger protein Snail1 in a PI 3-kinase-dependent manner. In obesity, the hepatic insulin-Snail1 cascade is impaired due to insulin resistance. Hepatocyte-specific deletion of Snail1 enhances insulin-stimulated lipogenesis in hepatocytes, exacerbates dietary NAFLD in mice, and attenuates NAFLD-associated insulin resistance. Liver-specific overexpression of Snail1 has the opposite effect. Mechanistically, Snail1 binds to the fatty acid synthase promoter and recruits HDAC1/2 to induce deacetylation of H3K9 and H3K27, thereby repressing fatty acid synthase promoter activity. Our data suggest that insulin pathways bifurcate into canonical (lipogenic) and noncanonical (anti-lipogenesis by Snail1) two arms. The noncanonical arm counterbalances the canonical arm through Snail1-elicited epigenetic suppression of lipogenic genes. Impairment in the insulin-Snail1 arm may contribute to NAFLD in obesity. |
