New protein discovered that aims to keep body mass constant by controlling appetite

A new protein — called NPGL — has been discovered that regulates hunger, increasing it when calorie consumption is reduced and decreasing it when calorie consumption goes up. In addition, while expression of the protein went down in mice who were fed a high fat diet for 5 weeks, it eventually returned to normal levels for mice who were on a high fat diet for 13 weeks — showing that after prolonged exposure to a calorie rich diet, the body comes to treat that amount of calories as the new normal state.

Summary here. Full research here.

Originally published at yourdailyscience.com on May 1, 2017.