HEALTHY muscle cells exposed to fat can become like cells taken from people with diabetes, with the genes that control fat-burning permanently switched off. 鈥淚n essence, fat tweaks the cell鈥檚 ability to burn fat,鈥� says of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
The findings suggest that changes to DNA may occur when healthy people eat fat-rich diets, and could ultimately explain why adults develop type 2 diabetes.
Zierath and her colleagues discovered that cells from people with diabetes already had these changes, especially in PGC-1, a gene that orchestrates fat burning.
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The researchers found that they could trigger the same effects in healthy muscle cells by exposing them to the fat palmitate. The results show that foods may reprogramme our DNA (Cell Metabolism, ).