Adiponectin
Adiponectin is mainly produced in fat tissue but other studies have shown it to be expressed in mRNA and protein levels in different tissues like osteoblasts in humans and murine (Berner et al., 2004), parenchymal cells in the liver (Yoda-Murakami et al., 2001; Jonsson et al., 2005; Kaser et al., 2005), myocytes (Delaigle et al., 2004), epithelial cells (Shimada et al., 2004; Patel et al., 2008), and placental tissue (Caminos et al., 2005; Chen et al., 2006). Adipose tissue used to be thought of as just an energy storage tissue and not secreting anything but contrary to what was thought, it actually secretes numerous hormones. It has been found that it can also secrete free fatty acid (Shulman, 2000), adipsin (White …show more content…
This is especially prevalent when energy input far exceeds energy output. A perfect example is chickens or poultry that are in cages and they are being fed diets high in energy such as fats and have no way of expending the energy acquired by eating that specific diet. The chances of acquiring FLD increases as obesity increases, so it stands to show that adiponectin can indeed have a positive impact on FLD and reduce it. Another study done with mice regarding FLD found that when obese mice got adiponectin infused, glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity increased and FLD was improved (Xu et al., 2003). This study proved that adiponectin plays an important role in controlling sensitivity to insulin and glucose and may even be able to help with obesity and diabetes. FLD comes in two forms, Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (AFLD) or Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). For all intents and purposes we will be dealing with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. A way to tell if FLD is present is to see if there are triglyceride droplets in the hepatocytes through histological processing (Puri et al., 2007). The amount of lipids a hepatocyte can hold is actually very small, less than 5% by weight (Poonawala et al., 2000), this does not allow for much storage of fats/lipids and can easily accumulate. There is a major protein that contributes to fatty acid synthesis and that increases as NAFLD is more pronounced. Sterol Regulatory Element-Binding Protein-1c (SREBP-1c) is a transcription factor that is membrane bound and helps regulate the expression of genes that are involved with lipid synthesis (Shimano, 2001). The SREBPs seem to also play a role in the development of NAFLD. This study will determine the effects adiponectin has on induced FLD chicks by micro- and macro- scopic observations of the liver and hepatocytes. Reverse Transcriptase-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) will be