By giving ordinary adult mice a drug - a synthetic designed to mimic fat - Salk Institute scientist Dr. Ronald M. Evans is now able to chemically switch on PPAR-d, the master regulator that controls the ability of cells to burn fat. Even when the mice are not active, turning on the chemical switch activates the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise. The resulting shift in energy balance (calories in, calories burned) makes the mice resistant to weight gain on a high fat diet.

The hope, Dr. Evans told scientists attending Experimental Biology 2007 in Washington, DC, is that such metabolic trickery will lead to a new approach to new treatment and prevention of human metabolic syndrome. Sometimes called syndrome X, this consists of obesity and the often dire health consequences of obesity: high blood pressure, high levels of fat in the blood, heart disease, and resistance to insulin and diabetes.

Dr. Evan's Experimental Biology presentation on April 30 is part of the scientific program of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

This chemical switch is not the first success Dr. Evan's laboratory has had in being able to turn on the PPAR-d switch in adipose or fat cells, activating local metabolism and increasing the amount of calories burned. As a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator at The Salk Institute's Gene Expression Laboratory, Dr. Evans discovered the role of the gene for PPAR-d, the master regulator of fat metabolism. By permanently turning on this delta switch in mice through genetic engineering, he was able to create a mouse with an innate resistance to weight gain and twice the physical endurance of normal mice. Because they were able to run an hour longer than a normal mouse, they were dubbed "marathon mice."

Subsequent work in the Evans laboratory found that activation of PPAR-d in these mice also suppresses the inflammatory response associated with arthrosclerosis.