Regulation of Energy Mobilization in Rainbow Trout: Metabolic Fluxes and Signaling

Abstract

Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) is an important freshwater fish whose glucose intolerance, white muscle lactate retention and high lipolytic inertia, have interested comparative physiologists for decades. Recent advancements in mammalian G-protein coupled receptor deorphanization research have identified many endogenous metabolites as regulators of energy metabolism, including lactate and long-chain fatty acids. In addition to being essential metabolic fuels, lactate and long-chain fatty acids regulate lipolysis and lipogenesis by binding to hydroxycarboxylic acid receptor 1 (HCAR1) and the free fatty acid receptors (FFAR1 and 4), respectively. Therefore, the goal of this thesis was to quantify the effects of exogenous lactate and lipids on glucose and fatty acid mobilization in rainbow trout and identify potential signaling mechanisms by monitoring the expression and activity of key glycolytic, gluconeogenic, lipolytic, lipogenic and β-oxidation targets in the liver, muscle and adipose tissue. In Chapter 2, in vivo measurements of metabolic fuel kinetics show that lactate (i) strongly reduced hepatic glucose production by substituting glucose for lactate and (ii) exhibited no lipolytic suppression suggesting HCAR1 signaling is weak in trout. In Chapter 3, in vivo measurements of energy mobilization show that Intralipid strongly induced lipolysis by saturating circulating lipases while transcriptional induction of gluconeogenesis compensates for the acute reduction in hepatic glucose production. Intralipid infusion increased total fatty acid concentration and altered fatty acid composition while suppressing lipid metabolism of trout liver and adipose tissue. In Chapter 4, I identify the presence (hcar1 and ffar1) and absence (ffar4) of these G-protein coupled receptor genes in the rainbow trout genome and describe their evolutionary origins, using in silico approaches of microsynteny, amino acid sequence similarity and critical residue conservation. However, their importance in fish physiology remains relatively unknown, thus future studies are warranted to further investigate such metabolic signals.