Burning fat with cysteine depletion

Authors:

Brittney Adams1, Stanislaw Walkowiak1 and Mohammed K Hankir1
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Affiliations:

1 School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Keywords: 

Essential amino acids, cysteine, integrated stress response, oxidative stress response, adipose tissue thermogenesis, obesity

Corresponding Author(s):

Mohammed K Hankir, School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland hankirm@tcd.ie

Conflict of interest statement:

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Please cite this article as:

Please cite this article as: Adams et al. (2025). Burning fat with cysteine depletion. Cell Stress 9: 201-215. doi: 10.15698/cst2025.11.313

This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.

Abstract:

Removing certain essential amino acids from the diet is known to promote weight loss in rodents via effects on food intake and energy expenditure. Two complementary articles by Varghese et al [Nature 643(8072)] and Lee et al [Nature Metabolism 7(6)] now show that cysteine depletion through combined dietary and genetic means in mice evokes a unique stress response in the liver to amplify these metabolic outcomes and offer a potentially new treatment option for obesity.