Meal shifts suppress liver enzymes

Researchers are proposing a test of whether shifts in meal timing can leave liver cells slower to process nutrients after normal conditions return. The proposed mechanism is that repeated meal shifts drive some metabolic enzymes, proteins that speed nutrient-processing reactions, into larger low-activity assemblies. These clusters could persist after pH, nutrient concentrations and cellular clock phases return to baseline, leaving metabolic flux, the rate of nutrient processing, slow to recover. In genetically matched human liver constructs, selectively breaking up the assemblies while preserving usual enzyme activity should remove the lag. Increasing exchange between compartments should leave it intact. A suitable human enzyme and physiological meal-timing trigger must first be identified.