Lipid Metabolism and Cardiometabolic Disease

Metabolic diseases such as diabetes, steatohepatitis, and coronary artery disease result from the delivery of nutrients that exceed a tissue’s energetic needs or storage capacity. The excess nutrients give rise to deleterious lipid species that impair cellular function. Summers and colleagues found that ceramides, a class of sphingolipids, alter the metabolism of liver and adipose tissue in a way that gives rise to cardiometabolic disease. Continue reading → Lipid Metabolism and Cardiometabolic Disease

Signaling Pathways That Underlie Heart Disease

Diseases affecting heart function exact an enormous toll on human health, but many of the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying heart disease remain unknown. Yost and colleagues discovered novel roles for the same developmental signaling pathway in two seemingly unrelated sources of cardiac dysfunction: adult heart failure and embryonic heart malformation. Continue reading → Signaling Pathways That Underlie Heart Disease