Cholestenoic acid as endogenous epigenetic regulator decreases hepatocyte lipid accumulation in vitro and in vivo

Abstract

Abstract

Cholestenoic acid (CA) has been reported as an important biomarker of many severe diseases, but its physiological and pathological roles remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate the potential role of CA in hepatic lipid homeostasis. Enzyme kinetic studies revealed that CA specifically activates DNA methyltransferases 1 (DNMT1) at low concentration with EC ₅₀ = 1.99 × 10 ⁻⁶ M and inhibits the activity at higher concentration with IC ₅₀ = 9.13 × 10 ⁻⁶ M, and specifically inhibits DNMT3a, and DNMT3b activities with IC ₅₀= 8.41 × 10 ⁻⁶ M and IC ₅₀= 4.89 × 10 ⁻⁶ M, respectively. In a human hepatocyte in vitro model of high glucose (HG)-induced lipid accumulation, CA significantly increased demethylation of ^5mCpG in the promoter regions of over 7,000 genes, particularly those involved in master signaling pathways such as calcium-AMPK and 0.0027 at 6 h. RNA sequencing analysis showed that the downregulated genes are affected by CA encoding key enzymes, such as PCSK9, MVK, and HMGCR, which are involved in cholesterol metabolism and steroid biosynthesis pathways. In addition, untargeted lipidomic analysis showed that CA significantly reduced neutral lipid levels by 60% in the cells cultured in high-glucose media. Administration of CA in mouse metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) models significantly decreases lipid accumulation, suppresses the gene expression involved in lipid biosynthesis in liver tissues, and alleviates liver function. This study shows that CA as an endogenous epigenetic regulator decreases lipid accumulation via epigenetic regulation. The results indicate that CA can be considered a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of metabolic disorders.

NEW & NOTEWORTHY To our knowledge, this study is the first to identify the mitochondrial monohydroxy bile acid cholestenoic acid (CA) as an endogenous epigenetic regulator that regulates lipid metabolism through epigenome modification in human hepatocytes. The methods used in this study are all big data analysis, and the results of each part show the global regulation of CA on human hepatocytes rather than narrow point effects.