Ciliary Adenylyl Cyclase3: A New Player in Obesity

Recent studies with transgenic mice and human genetic studies have implicated defects in the expression of type 3 adenylyl cyclase (AC3) in obesity. Human genetic studies have indicated that AC3 polymorphisms are associated with body mass index (BMI) in the populations with obesity and type 2 diabetes. Our studies using both AC3 global knockout mice and AC3 conditioned knockout mice demonstrated that AC3 plays an important role in the regulation of body weight, implying that AC3 might be a potential drug target site to combat obesity. We propose that AC3 in the hypothalamus plays an important role in leptin signaling