According to a new study done in fruit flies, body organs such as the intestine and ovaries undergo structural changes in response to dietary nutrients that can impact metabolism and cancer susceptibility in the long term. The effects were reported by scientists at the Carnegie Institute for Science and published in Developmental Cell.
Fruit flies are currently the most sensitive experimental system for detecting diet-induced cellular changes likely to be similar in mammals. Fruit flies and mammals alike have three types of cell in their intestines: stem cells, hormone-producing cells, and nutrient handling cells.
In the current study, the researchers found that exposing fruit flies to increased dietary cholesterol altered cellular programming, causing a higher than usual number of hormone-producing cells to be produced from the stem cells at the expense of nutrient-handling cells. Decreasing dietary cholesterol resulted in more nutrient-absorbing cells being produced and fewer hormone-producing cells.
The team was also able to identify the molecular mechanism by which cholesterol causes this change.
Together, these findings provide a mechanistic explanation to the observation that low nutrient availability early in life can lead individuals to struggle with obesity in adulthood. The researchers believe these findings may also help in finding ways to use diet to mitigate aging and disease in adults.
Image: Fruit fly. Image courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science.