Skeleton interoception regulates bone and fat metabolism through hypothalamic neuroendocrine NPY

  1. Xiao Lv
  2. Feng Gao
  3. Tuo Peter Li
  4. Peng Xue
  5. Xiao Wang
  6. Mei Wan
  7. Bo Hu
  8. Hao Chen
  9. Amit Jain
  10. Zengwu Shao
  11. Xu Cao  Is a corresponding author
  1. Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States
  2. Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China

Abstract

The central nervous system regulates activity of peripheral organs through interoception. In our previous study, we have demonstrated that PGE2/EP4 skeleton interception regulate bone homeostasis. Here we show that ascending skeleton interoceptive signaling downregulates expression of hypothalamic neuropeptide Y (NPY) and induce lipolysis of adipose tissue for osteoblastic bone formation. Specifically, the ascending skeleton interoceptive signaling induces expression of small heterodimer partner-interacting leucine zipper protein (SMILE) in the hypothalamus. SMILE binds to pCREB as a transcriptional heterodimer on Npy promoters to inhibit NPY expression. Knockout of EP4 in sensory nerve increases expression of NPY causing bone catabolism and fat anabolism. Importantly, inhibition of NPY Y1 receptor (Y1R) accelerated oxidation of free fatty acids in osteoblasts and rescued bone loss in AvilCre:Ptger4fl/fl mice. Thus, downregulation of hypothalamic NPY expression lipolyzes free fatty acids for anabolic bone formation through a neuroendocrine descending interoceptive regulation.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figures 1-7.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Xiao Lv

    Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0175-5240
  2. Feng Gao

    Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Tuo Peter Li

    Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-4302-9538
  4. Peng Xue

    Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Xiao Wang

    Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6395-706X
  6. Mei Wan

    Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9404-540X
  7. Bo Hu

    Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Hao Chen

    Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Amit Jain

    Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Zengwu Shao

    Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  11. Xu Cao

    Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
    For correspondence
    xcao11@jhmi.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8614-6059

Funding

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Mone Zaidi, Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States

Ethics

Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (MO18M298) of the Johns Hopkins University.

Version history

  1. Received: May 13, 2021
  2. Accepted: May 21, 2021
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: September 1, 2021 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: September 14, 2021 (version 2)
  5. Version of Record updated: January 3, 2023 (version 3)

Copyright

© 2021, Lv et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 1,624
    views
  • 306
    downloads
  • 16
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Xiao Lv
  2. Feng Gao
  3. Tuo Peter Li
  4. Peng Xue
  5. Xiao Wang
  6. Mei Wan
  7. Bo Hu
  8. Hao Chen
  9. Amit Jain
  10. Zengwu Shao
  11. Xu Cao
(2021)
Skeleton interoception regulates bone and fat metabolism through hypothalamic neuroendocrine NPY
eLife 10:e70324.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70324

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70324

Further reading

    1. Medicine
    Jinjing Chen, Ruoyu Wang ... Jongsook Kemper
    Research Article

    The nuclear receptor, farnesoid X receptor (FXR/NR1H4), is increasingly recognized as a promising drug target for metabolic diseases, including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Protein-coding genes regulated by FXR are well known, but whether FXR also acts through regulation of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), which vastly outnumber protein-coding genes, remains unknown. Utilizing RNA-seq and global run-on sequencing (GRO-seq) analyses in mouse liver, we found that FXR activation affects the expression of many RNA transcripts from chromatin regions bearing enhancer features. Among these we discovered a previously unannotated liver-enriched enhancer-derived lncRNA (eRNA), termed FXR-induced non-coding RNA (Fincor). We show that Fincor is specifically induced by the hammerhead-type FXR agonists, including GW4064 and tropifexor. CRISPR/Cas9-mediated liver-specific knockdown of Fincor in dietary NASH mice reduced the beneficial effects of tropifexor, an FXR agonist currently in clinical trials for NASH and primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), indicating that amelioration of liver fibrosis and inflammation in NASH treatment by tropifexor is mediated in part by Fincor. Overall, our findings highlight that pharmacological activation of FXR by hammerhead-type agonists induces a novel eRNA, Fincor, contributing to the amelioration of NASH in mice. Fincor may represent a new drug target for addressing metabolic disorders, including NASH.