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Franco et al, review how metabolic insufficiency and prolonged stress responses impact signaling cascades and epigenetic reprogramming to lock T cells into an exhausted state.
After activation, conventional T cells undergo metabolic reprogramming. de Kivit et al. show that in human thymic regulatory T cells, TNFR2 stimulation promotes a glycolytic switch with a preferential glucose-derived carbon flux into the TCA cycle to support suppressive functions.
As the world came to a standstill in the spring of 2020, so did the work on our Focus issue on exercise metabolism and health, which was originally scheduled for publication to coincide with the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.
Individual differences in physical performance in the sedentary state and in response to exercise training have been observed in rodent and human studies. The genomic variants underlying these genetic components are unknown. Nonetheless, without a rich genetic endowment, world-class athletic performance is out of reach.
Electron transport chain (ETC) regulation can have important consequences for cellular bioenergetics. Here, Acín-Pérez et al. show that macrophage ETC regulation by the Fgr kinase can also affect systemic metabolism in the setting of diet-induced obesity.
Aberrant upregulation of de novo lipogenesis is linked to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and some cancers. A new study by Kelly et al. finds that inhibiting this pathway by blocking the activity of acetyl-CoA carboxylase has unexpected effects on the formation of platelets from megakaryocytes within the bone marrow of primates but not rodents, thus suggesting clinical implications for de novo lipogenesis inhibitors as a new class of therapeutics.
Exercise is a powerful modifier of organismal, tissue and cellular metabolism. In their Review, Koelwyn et al. highlight how exercise-induced alterations in the tumour microenvironment can affect immunometabolic mechanisms and how these changes may contribute to the benefits of exercise on cancer initiation and progression.
Pharmacological targeting of de novo lipogenesis is an attractive clinical target for a wide range of diseases. Kelly et al. report that de novo lipogenesis is essential for platelet production in primates, but not in dogs and rats.
Kusuyama et al. review the effects of maternal and paternal exercise on offspring metabolic health in adulthood, the time of life when metabolic diseases typically surface.
Islet of Langerhans transplantation as a cell therapy for type 1 diabetes faces obstacles that have prevented full and lasting engraftment in the liver, the currently preferred implantation site in clinical practice. Yu and colleagues circumvent these issues and achieve stable diabetes reversal by transplanting islets encapsulated in a simple collagen-based matrix into the more accessible subcutaneous space.
Xia et al. provide a method for deep learning of 3D facial images to predict biological age with an accuracy of ±2.8 yr from chronological age and its correlation with lifestyle indicators and blood transcriptomic age.
A single intracerebroventricular injection of FGF1 leads to a remarkable remission of diabetes in various rodent models. Here, Alonge et al. show that FGF1-induced diabetes remission in rats requires remodelling of perineuronal nets that enmesh glucoregulatory neurons in the arcuate nucleus.
Yu et al. report a preparation that enables transplantation of pancreatic islets underneath the skin and achieves long-term euglycaemia in several preclinical models of type 1 diabetes, thus providing a simple method that might enable a more widespread adoption of islet transplantation in the clinic.
The authors report the case of a young patient who displayed insulin-dependent diabetes after SARS-CoV-2 infection in the absence of autoantibodies indicative of autoimmune type 1 diabetes.
Carbohydrate metabolism in germ cells is shown to promote sugar appetite in female flies, thus demonstrating how metabolism in a subset of cells alters whole-animal behaviour.
Fructose consumption has greatly increased in recent years and has been linked to the development of hepatic steatosis. Here, the authors show that fructose promotes gut-barrier deterioration and subsequent endotoxaemia that in turn induces hepatic lipogenesis by activation TLR signalling in liver macrophages.
The reprogramming factor Glis1 is shown to drive cellular metabolic changes that in turn promote epigenetic alterations that facilitate induction of pluripotency.