CNS myelination and remyelination depend on fatty acid synthesis by oligodendrocytes.

Oligodendrocytes (OLs) support neurons and signal transmission in the central nervous system (CNS) by enwrapping axons with myelin, a lipid-rich membrane structure. We addressed the significance of fatty acid (FA) synthesis in OLs by depleting FA synthase (FASN) from OL progenitor cells (OPCs) in transgenic mice. While we detected no effects in proliferation and differentiation along the postnatal OL lineage, we found that FASN is essential for accurate myelination, including myelin growth. Increasing dietary lipid intake could partially compensate for the FASN deficiency. Furthermore, FASN contributes to correct myelin lipid composition and stability of myelinated axons. Moreover, we depleted FASN specifically in adult OPCs to examine its relevance for remyelination. Applying lysolecithin-induced focal demyelinating spinal cord lesions, we found that FA synthesis is essential to sustain adult OPC-derived OLs and efficient remyelination. We conclude that FA synthesis in OLs plays key roles in CNS myelination and remyelination.

Inactivation of hypothalamic FAS protects mice from diet-induced obesity and inflammation.

Obesity promotes insulin resistance and chronic inflammation. Disrupting any of several distinct steps in lipid synthesis decreases adiposity, but it is unclear if this approach coordinately corrects the environment that propagates metabolic disease. We tested the hypothesis that inactivation of FAS in the hypothalamus prevents diet-induced obesity and systemic inflammation. Ten weeks of high-fat feeding to mice with inactivation of FAS (FASKO) limited to the hypothalamus and pancreatic beta cells protected them from diet-induced obesity. Though high-fat fed FASKO mice had no beta-cell phenotype, they were hypophagic and hypermetabolic, and they had increased insulin sensitivity at the liver but not the periphery as demonstrated by hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamps, and biochemically by increased phosphorylated Akt, glycogen synthase kinase-3beta, and FOXO1 compared with wild-type mice. High-fat fed FASKO mice had decreased excretion of urinary isoprostanes, suggesting less oxidative stress and blunted tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFalpha) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) responses to endotoxin, suggesting less systemic inflammation. Pair-feeding studies demonstrated that these beneficial effects were dependent on central FAS disruption and not merely a consequence of decreased adiposity. Thus, inducing central FAS deficiency may be a valuable integrative strategy for treating several components of the metabolic syndrome, in part by correcting hepatic insulin resistance and suppressing inflammation.