N-acetylcysteine effect on preadipocytes differentiation.

P. CALZADILLA; J.P. ARCÓN; F. ADOT; J.C. CALVO; L.N. GUERRA.

Mar del Plata

Encuentro; V Encuentro Anual de Biólogos en Red.; 2010

FCEyN, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata.

Some authors reported that fat accumulation correlates to systemic oxidative stress in human and mice, but the relationship of lipid production and oxidative metabolism is still unclear. We performed assays with preadipocytes 3T3-L1 (undifferentiated cells: UC) which under defined conditions are capable to differentiate to mature adipocytes (differentiated cells: DC) and accumulate lipids. We have previously demonstrated that ROS production increased during differentiation as well as SOD and GPX activities. We observed that treatment with 10nM N-acetylcisteine (NAC) significantly inhibited lipid accumulation (DC: 1.21 ± 0.12 vs. DC + NAC: 0.31 ± 0.05 g triglycerides/g protein; p < 0.01). As the main cellular reducing agent, we determined GSH levels in the system (DC: 0.51 ± 0.03 vs. DC + NAC: 0.68 ± 0.02 vs. mmoles GSH/g protein; p < 0.01). After treatment of preadipocytes with inducers of differentiation a transient increase in expression of adipogenic transcriptional factors C/EBPb, C/EBPd and PPARg is observed. We determined their expression after NAC treatment, a time course analysis was performed during four days and a decrease expression was observed at day 2 after differentiation: 4 fold for C/EBPb (DC: 18.1, DC + NAC: 4.1 arbitrary units), 2 folds for C/EBPd (DC: 4.9, DC + NAC: 2.0 arbitrary units) and a very low decrease for PPARg (DC: 3.4, DC + NAC: 2.5 arbitrary units); a 3 fold decrease for PPARg was observed at day 4 after differentiation (DC: 2.7, DC + NAC: 0.84 arbitrary units) . We postulated that NAC inhibited lipid accumulation by affecting adipogenic transcriptional factors.