News and thoughts:
Cell Stress, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 216 - 221; doi: 10.15698/cst2025.11.313
Burning fat with cysteine depletion
1 School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Keywords: Essential amino acids, cysteine, integrated stress response, oxidative stress response, adipose tissue thermogenesis, obesity
Received originally: 26/08/2025 Received in revised form: 21/10/2025
Accepted: 28/10/2025
Published: 13/11/2025
Correspondence:
Mohammed K Hankir, School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland hankirm@tcd.ie
Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Please cite this article as: Please cite this article as: Adams et al. (2025). Burning fat with cysteine depletion. Cell Stress 9: 201-215. doi: 10.15698/cst2025.11.313
Removing certain essential amino acids from the diet is known to promote weight loss in rodents via effects on food intake and energy expenditure. Two complementary articles by Varghese et al [Nature 643(8072)] and Lee et al [Nature Metabolism 7(6)] now show that cysteine depletion through combined dietary and genetic means in mice evokes a unique stress response in the liver to amplify these metabolic outcomes and offer a potentially new treatment option for obesity.
For full text please see pdf.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MKH has received financial support for producing this article from funds from the School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity College Dublin
COPYRIGHT
© 2025
Burning fat with cysteine depletion by Adams et al. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
