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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		A rare disease reveals the importance of the nutrient copper
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:06
	Publish Date:		2016-08-17 19:00:00
	Description:		A rare disease that causes copper buildup in the liver has revealed how our bodies use the metal nutrient. To learn more about the link between copper and fat metabolism, researcher Chris Chang of the University of California, Berkeley studied mice suffering from a disorder also seen in humans. "The disease model that we used for the mouse studies is called Wilson’s disease, and it’s a rare genetic disorder that’s directly related to the inability to handle copper in the body. So people who have this type of disease, they have a buildup of copper in the liver. It means that there’s copper deficiency in other organs and tissues throughout the body." Chang hypothesized that this deficiency would have an impact on fat tissue and its metabolism as well. "And what we identified in the mice is that if you have too much copper in the liver, then you don’t have enough copper in the fat tissue, then those fat tissues don’t burn fat as well. And so there is a correlation between a rare, but real human disorder." Since there are high levels of metal nutrients in the brain, the next step is to look at copper and obesity in a neurological context.
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