New research conducted by Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU) provides new targets for obesity and diabetes treatment and prevention.

Professor Liu Jiankang of the School of Life Science and Technology and Professor Feng Zhihui of the Frontier Institute of Science and Technology successfully analyzed the specific mechanism by which alternate-day fasting improves the body's metabolic sensitivity by using a variety of gene knockout mice, the alternate-day fasting model and the high-fat diet model, and complicated experimental methods such as multi-omics combined analysis, comprehensive detection of mitochondrial homeostasis, tissue-cell co-culture, and metabolic behavior system analysis.

The scientists found that alternate-day fasting can activate the arginine/nitric oxide metabolic network in hepatocytes by inhibiting the dynamic assembly of mitochondrial complex II in the liver, and target important target organs such as fat and muscle by releasing nitric oxide outside the liver cells. This can improve the insulin sensitivity of important target organs such as fat and muscle, thereby effectively preventing obesity and improving diabetes symptoms.

The research results, titled Hepatic Suppression of Mitochondrial Complex II Assembly Drives Systemic Metabolic Benefits, were published in the journal Advanced Science with an impact factor of 16.8. (Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202105587)

The work was completed by doctoral students Wang Xueqiang and Lyu Weiqiang, and assistant professor Xu Jie from the School of Life Science and Technology under the guidance of Feng and Liu.

Professor Shao Yongping of the Frontier Institute of Science and Technology, associate researcher Zou Xuan of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University (Xibei Hospital), and Long Jiangang of the School of Life Science and Technology, Professor Zhang Fang from Shanghai Jiao Tong University also provided guidance and support for this work.

XJTU is the unit of the first author and corresponding author. This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Alternate-day fasting consists of a 24-hour fast followed by a 24-hour free eating cycle, which has attracted the attention of scientists in the field.

Diabetes is considered a "chronic cancer", a disorder of blood glucose metabolism caused by insufficient insulin secretion in the body or decreased sensitivity of the body caused by factors such as diet, environment, drugs, and genetics. Among them, obesity caused by eating disorders is one of the main risk factors for diabetes.

Although the clinical treatment of diabetes has become increasingly standardized, limited targeted drugs and ubiquitous environmental and life risk factors have resulted in low disease treatment rates and vacancy rates. 

For this reason, research on intervention treatment using various lifestyles such as exercise, calorie restriction, and dietary restriction has rapidly become the focus of attention in the fields of basic scientific research and clinical treatment of diabetes in recent years.