The Molecular Role of Taurine in the Protection Against Obesity and Metabolic Diseases

Abstract

Taurine has been reported to prevent obesity by influencing thermogenesis. To understand the underlying molecular mechanism of how taurine impacts thermogenesis, we first profiled the taurine biosynthetic pathway under pharmacologically-activated thermogenesis. Based on our study, we found that taurine biosynthetic enzymes, especially ADO, significantly upregulated in inguinal adipocytes in response to thermogenesis. Moreover, the ablation of ADO in adipocytes demonstrated a lower mitochondrial oxygen consumption rate and significantly downregulated taurine level, which suggested that taurine might play a crucial role in regulating healthy mitochondria functions. To understand the large-scale association between taurine and thermogenic adipocytes, we performed an ATAC-seq analysis, which illustrated that taurine supplementation in inguinal cells increased chromatin accessibilities in the hypoxia-inducible factor 1 pathway and glucose metabolic-related genes, suggesting that taurine might regulate mitochondria functions and accelerate the thermogenic-driven metabolism. Further studies are required to analyze whether gene accessibilities can transcribe into proteins and relate to thermogenesis.