Functional investigation of adipose long intergenic noncoding RNAs in obesity

The research in this proposal is aimed at understanding the functions of a class of newly identified biological molecule: long intergenic noncoding RNA (lincRNA), in fat cells. These RNAs don't code proteins and had been considered as 'junk' in human genome due to the lack of evidence for biological functions. Recently these lincRNAs have been increasingly implicated in playing important roles in human diseases. This proposal will focus on 2 specific lincRNAs in human fat tissue and examine how they regulate the functions of human fat cells and contribute to obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2DM). First, the biological impacts of these 2 lincRNAs will be examined in different aspects of fat cell functions, such as lipid production/storage and inflammatory proteins secretion from fat cells. Experiments will be performed to take these lincRNAs out from fat cells, or put many copies of linRNA molecules into fat cells, and observe if any fat cell function is changed. Next, experiments will be conducted to elucidate how these lincRNAs operate inside cells to mediate fat cell functions. For example, the operation partners for these 2 lincRNAs will be identified and studied mechanistically. Results from these studies will provide novel knowledge in obesity, diabetes and how obesity increases risks of T2DM, leading to future studies of human lincRNAs as innovative diagnostic and therapeutic targets to battle obesity and T2DM.