Scientists have found a key protein that can help you burn belly fat and avoid diabetes

Natural remedy to help people burn out thick became one step closer after a scientific breakthrough.

The study shed light on how to activate brown fat, the “good” fat in the body that burns a lot of calories to keep you warm in cold conditions.

Unlike the “bad” white fat that people deposit on their belly, which often leads to obesity, scientists have sought to use brown fat to help people. lose weight.

If they could turn it on anytime, not just when people are cold, they could help them lose weight on demand.

This is still a long way off (SUBS – must be preserved), but scientists have come much closer after uncovering the detailed molecular structure of the protein that causes brown fat to form. to burn calories.

White fat is fat that accumulates around the belly and often leads to obesity.

A protein called Uncoupling Protein 1 (UCP1) is a scientific mystery, and researchers want to understand how it “turns on” to cause brown fat to burn calories.

But now they have an understanding, after discovering the position of the two “gates” inside the protein when it is turned off.

Since the inner gate is closed and the outer gate is open when the protein is inactive, they believe that the gate must be in the opposite position in order to activate the protein.

The next step is to find a drug that alters the gate in a way that boosts brown fat calorie burning, which could help people lose weight.

Brown fat is the holy grail because studies show that people who have more tend to be leaner, and so activating it may provide a natural weight loss solution rather than a diet pill.

Professor Edmund Kunji, who led the study from the University of Cambridge, said: “This structure will allow scientists to understand how a fat-burning protein is turned on.”

“It can also remove glucose from the blood, helping to control diabetes.

“This is a significant breakthrough in this area.”

The study claims that activating brown fat stores may be the key to preventing diabetes.

The uncoupling protein is too small to be seen under a microscope.

But the research team used tiny llama antibodies to attach the uncoupling protein to two other proteins. squirrels.

This created a structure large enough to be viewed from all sides with an electron microscope.

The researchers simply had to ignore the structure of the other proteins in the image in order to figure out the structure of the important uncoupling protein.

The breakthrough was made through an international collaboration between the University of East Anglia, the University of Cambridge, the University of Pennsylvania and the Free University of Brussels.

Dr Paul Crichton of UEA Norwich Medical School said: “Despite over 40 years of research, we still didn’t know what UCP1 looked like to understand how it worked.”

The findings are published in the journal Science Advances.