Scientists find a key protein that could help you burn off belly fat and avoid diabetes

A natural treatment to help people burn fat is one step closer after a scientific breakthrough.

A study has shed light on activating brown fat, the “good” fat in the body that burns large amounts of calories to keep us warm in cold conditions.

Unlike “bad” white fat, which people store around their bellies, which often leads to obesity, scientists are keen to use brown fat to help people lose weight.

If they can turn it on at any time, and not just when people are cold, they can help them lose weight on demand.

This is still a long way off, but scientists have moved significantly closer after revealing the detailed molecular structure of the protein that causes brown fat to burn calories.

The protein, called Uncoupling Protein 1 (UCP1), is a scientific mystery and researchers want to understand how it “turns on” to kick-start the burning of calories in brown fat.

But they now have insight, after finding the position of two ‘gates’ in the protein when it is switched off.

Since the inner gate is closed and the outer gate is open when the protein is inactive, they think the gates must be in the opposite position for the protein to activate.

The next step is to find a drug that changes the gates in this way, to kick-start the brown fat’s calorie-burning activity, helping people lose weight.

Brown fat is the holy grail, as research shows that people who have more of it tend to be leaner, which is why activating it can be a natural weight loss solution rather than a weight-loss pill.

Professor Edmund Kunji, who led the study from the University of Cambridge, said: ‘This structure will enable scientists to understand how to switch on the protein, which leads to fat burning.

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

“This is an important breakthrough in this field.”

Activating brown fat reserves could be key to preventing diabetes, the study claims

The uncoupling protein is too small to be viewed properly through a microscope.

But the research team used small antibodies from llama to stick the uncoupling protein to two other proteins.

This created a structure large enough to be viewed from all angles using an electron microscope.

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

The breakthrough came about 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, from UEA’s Norwich Medical School, said: ‘Despite more than 40 years of research, until now we didn’t know what UCP1 looks like to understand how it works.’

The findings are published in the journal Science Advances.