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N-Acetylaspartate Metabolism Outside the Brain: Lipogenesis, Histone Acetylation, and Cancer

N-acetylaspartate (NAA) is a highly abundant brain metabolite. Aberrant NAA concentrations have been detected in many pathological conditions and although the function of NAA has been extensively investigated in the brain it is still controversial. Only recently, a role of NAA has been reported outs...

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Autor principal: Bogner-Strauss, Juliane G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5611401/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28979238
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2017.00240
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author Bogner-Strauss, Juliane G.
author_facet Bogner-Strauss, Juliane G.
author_sort Bogner-Strauss, Juliane G.
collection PubMed
description N-acetylaspartate (NAA) is a highly abundant brain metabolite. Aberrant NAA concentrations have been detected in many pathological conditions and although the function of NAA has been extensively investigated in the brain it is still controversial. Only recently, a role of NAA has been reported outside the brain. In brown adipocytes, which show high expression of the NAA-producing and the NAA-cleaving enzyme, the metabolism of NAA has been implicated in lipid synthesis and histone acetylation. Increased expression of N-acetyltransferase 8-like (Nat8l, the gene encoding the NAA synthesizing enzyme) induces de novo lipogenesis and the brown adipocyte phenotype. Accordingly silencing of aspartoacylase, the NAA-cleaving enzyme, reduced brown adipocyte differentiation mechanistically by decreasing histone acetylation and gene transcription. Notably, the expression of Nat8l and the amount of NAA were also shown to be increased in several tumors and inversely correlate with patients’ survival. Additionally, Nat8l silencing reduced cell proliferation in tumor and non-tumor cells, while NAA supplementation could rescue it. However, the mechanism behind has not yet been clarified. It remains to be addressed whether NAA per se and/or its catabolism to acetate and aspartate, metabolites that have both been implicated in tumor growth, are valuable targets for future therapies.
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spelling pubmed-56114012017-10-04 N-Acetylaspartate Metabolism Outside the Brain: Lipogenesis, Histone Acetylation, and Cancer Bogner-Strauss, Juliane G. Front Endocrinol (Lausanne) Endocrinology N-acetylaspartate (NAA) is a highly abundant brain metabolite. Aberrant NAA concentrations have been detected in many pathological conditions and although the function of NAA has been extensively investigated in the brain it is still controversial. Only recently, a role of NAA has been reported outside the brain. In brown adipocytes, which show high expression of the NAA-producing and the NAA-cleaving enzyme, the metabolism of NAA has been implicated in lipid synthesis and histone acetylation. Increased expression of N-acetyltransferase 8-like (Nat8l, the gene encoding the NAA synthesizing enzyme) induces de novo lipogenesis and the brown adipocyte phenotype. Accordingly silencing of aspartoacylase, the NAA-cleaving enzyme, reduced brown adipocyte differentiation mechanistically by decreasing histone acetylation and gene transcription. Notably, the expression of Nat8l and the amount of NAA were also shown to be increased in several tumors and inversely correlate with patients’ survival. Additionally, Nat8l silencing reduced cell proliferation in tumor and non-tumor cells, while NAA supplementation could rescue it. However, the mechanism behind has not yet been clarified. It remains to be addressed whether NAA per se and/or its catabolism to acetate and aspartate, metabolites that have both been implicated in tumor growth, are valuable targets for future therapies. Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-09-20 /pmc/articles/PMC5611401/ /pubmed/28979238 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2017.00240 Text en Copyright © 2017 Bogner-Strauss. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Endocrinology
Bogner-Strauss, Juliane G.
N-Acetylaspartate Metabolism Outside the Brain: Lipogenesis, Histone Acetylation, and Cancer
title N-Acetylaspartate Metabolism Outside the Brain: Lipogenesis, Histone Acetylation, and Cancer
title_full N-Acetylaspartate Metabolism Outside the Brain: Lipogenesis, Histone Acetylation, and Cancer
title_fullStr N-Acetylaspartate Metabolism Outside the Brain: Lipogenesis, Histone Acetylation, and Cancer
title_full_unstemmed N-Acetylaspartate Metabolism Outside the Brain: Lipogenesis, Histone Acetylation, and Cancer
title_short N-Acetylaspartate Metabolism Outside the Brain: Lipogenesis, Histone Acetylation, and Cancer
title_sort n-acetylaspartate metabolism outside the brain: lipogenesis, histone acetylation, and cancer
topic Endocrinology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5611401/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28979238
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2017.00240
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