Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

What are the enzymes responsible for getting rid of the stored fat in the human body? Can we buy them? from where? Can they work outside the body too the same way?

Hi and welcome to Scibuddies. I'll try to help you with your question--an area of great interest in the U.S. today!

Metabolism overall is a very complex process and duplicating it outside the body would be very difficult if not impossible. The best scientists can do is use surrogate model systems to study the various enzymes, cofactors and proteins involved.

If you google fatty acid metabolism, you will see what i mean about the complexity. We eat many types of fat, but they are all stored as lipids in the adipocytes along with a variety of proteins. Lipids are long-chain carbon compounds that are insoluble in water. They provide over twice the energy per gram as carbohydrates. That's why they are such a good form for energy storage. Lipids are metabolized to produce the body's energy molecule, ATP, by a multistep enzymatic process that I had to learn in biochemistry but which everyone then forgets! It is called the Krebs Cycle and if you are really curious, you can look it up and think about how many scientists and years of work it took to figure out all the steps.

To answer your question--yes, you can do some of the steps of fat metabolism outside the body. There is one enzyme called pancreatic lipase that is secreted by the pancreas into the intestine to break down fats. It is fairly inexpensive. I priced it at Sigma-Aldrich and it was $34 for 25 g of porcine pancreatic lipase: http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/pro ... &region=US

What is your plan with this project? Have you thought about a hypothesis or is this part of some other project? Repost with some more details and we can help you better.

Best wishes,

SciB