Amino acids are important modulators of skeletal muscle metabolism, but their impact on glucose uptake by skeletal muscle remains unclear. To address the effect of an amino acid (AA) mixture consisting predominately of isoleucine on glucose uptake we first conducted a dose-response experiment, investigating how different concentrations of the AA mixture affect glucose uptake by isolated rat epitrochlearis muscle. In a subsequent experiment we examined how the AA mixture affects insulin-stimulated glucose uptake by isolated rat epitrochlearis muscle. It was found that the AA mixture with as little as 0.5 mM Ile increases [H3]2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) uptake by 76% compared to basal glucose uptake. The AA mixtures with 1, 2 or 4 mM Ile provided no significant additional effect. Next we combined the AA mixture consisting of 2 mM Ile, 0.012 mM Cys, 0.006 mM Val and 0.014 mM Leu with physiological levels (75 μU/ml, sINS) and maximally-stimulating levels (2 mU/ml, mINS) of insulin. The AA mixture only, sINS and mINS significantly increased 2-DG uptake compared to basal by 63, 79 and 298%, respectively. When the AA mixture was combined with sINS and mINS 2-DG uptake was further increased significantly by 26 and 14%, respectively. Western blotting analysis revealed that compared to basal the AA mixture increased AS160 phosphorylation, while phosphorylation of Akt and mTOR did not change. Combining the AA mixture with sINS resulted in no additional phosphorylation compared to sINS alone. Interestingly, addition of the AA mixture to mINS resulted in increased phosphorylation of mTOR, Akt and AS160 compared to mINS alone. Our results suggest that certain AAs (1) increase glucose uptake in the absence of insulin and (2) augment insulin-stimulated glucose uptake in an additive manner. These effects on glucose uptake appear to be mediated via a molecular pathway that is partially independent from the canonical insulin signaling cascade. / text

published_or_final_version / Obstetrics and Gynaecology / Master / Master of Philosophy

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The single-particle momentum is studied as a tool for the visualization of the electronic regions in atoms and molecules. The limiting values of this function correctly obey two fundamental theorems: Kato's cusp condition and the Hoffmann-Ostenhof and Hoffmann-Ostenhof exponential decay. The local momentum also depicts the electron shell structure in atoms as given by its local maxima and inflection points. The integration of the electron density in a shell gives electron populations that are in agreement with the ones expected from the periodic table of the elements. The shell structure obtained is in agreement with higher level of theory computations. The average of the local kinetic energy associated with the local momentum is the Weizsäcker kinetic energy. It is shown that this quantity provides an estimate of steric interactions in molecules. The single-particle momentum is a practical tool for the exploration of new stabilizing interactions for all kinds of molecular systems. It provides a three-dimensional representation of the molecular structure and depicts the polarizability regions, a feature not available with other continuous analyses. A general definition of the radius of an atom in terms of its ionization energy is found. A relationship between these two fundamental properties is derived from the radial distribution function and the local momentum for the valence electrons. Strong correlations with well-known atomic radii suggest that this is a universally valid definition of the atomic radius. The stability of peptides in the alpha-helix conformation upon replacement of the central amino acid is studied. These systems were optimized with a continuous solvent model and a recently developed DFT functional with empirical terms accounting for dispersion interactions. Both, the dispersion terms and the solvent model are directly related to the polarizability of the involved atoms. A new formula for an ab initio computation of the polarizability is introduced and tested for the amino acids.