Laura Tran in The Scientist:
Diet, weight, and metabolism are intricately linked, so studying their relationship is no easy task. People’s eating habits encompass a wide variety of foods, many of which are shared between different types of diets; this complexity makes it difficult to establish cause and effect. “What should you eat? What should you not eat?” mused Jonathan Long, a biochemist at Stanford University. To tackle this challenge, Long focuses on isolating single, chemically well-defined components of diets to better understand their impact on the body.
Taurine, an amino acid commonly found in meats, shellfish, and energy drinks, is a regular part of many diets. While humans naturally produce taurine, dietary taurine can support the immune system and improve cardiovascular health. It is often used as a supplement for weight loss or to enhance exercise performance. Given taurine’s involvement in various physiological functions, researchers have been keen to understand how it is metabolized in the body, as it is converted into different taurine-containing molecules. This prompted Long to explore its metabolic pathways and he homed in on an understudied taurine metabolite called N-acetyltaurine.1
More here.
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