Leptin is a kind of food sensor that is responsible for controlling appetite and telling the brain "Enough is enough" when you have enough energy. Its study is very important to treat diseases such as obesity and diabetes, and until now mice have been used for its analysis, since it is an exclusive hormone of vertebrates . Now, a group of researchers from Harvard Medical School (USA) has found a homologous substance in the fruit fly: it is called Upd2 and, because flies are very easy animals to study in the laboratory, thanks to this discovery may reveal new secrets about the obesity hormone.
The researchers obtained genetically modified flies that lacked the Upd2 protein and observed that these animals behaved metabolically as if they were constantly hungry , indicating that this protein acts in a similar way to the human hormone. They then inserted the human leptin gene into these animals, and found that the problem disappeared and the flies behaved normally.
"The way leptin works is very complex," explained Akhila Rajan, one of the authors of the work, which is published in the journal Cell . "These types of hormones acquire a more complicated function as they evolve. Here, in the fly, leptin is in its most primitive form ," he added.
