Hepatic lipid homeostasis is coordinated by various metabolic pathways, such as lipogenesis, lipid uptake, storage, and oxidation. However, the underlying mechanism that orchestrates metabolic crosstalk remains unclarified. Herein, we demonstrated that fumarate hydratase (FH) functioned as an indispensable adaptor governing mitochondria metabolism and lipid droplets (LDs) degradation. Hepatic FH overexpression prevented hepatic steatosis in normal mice and ob/ob mice without interfering mitochondrial lipid oxidation and lipogenesis. Strikingly, we found that FH selectively activated lipophagy-mediated LDs lipidolysis. Mechanistically, FH interacted with ULK1 and stabilized ULK1 through preventing its ubiquitination and degradation, resulting in lipophagy activation and the elimination of hepatic lipid accumulation. Meanwhile, hepatic ULK1 deficiency abrogated the protective effects in FH-overexpressing mice. Also, we clarified that the interaction between FH and ULK1 occurred in cytoplasm, but not in mitochondria. Cytoplasmic FH was sensitive to lipids and downregulated without affecting mitochondrial FH in vivo. Moreover, the FH-ULK1 axis was identified closely associated with hepatic steatosis in human patients. Taken together, our research demonstrates a “two-side” insight of FH on hepatic lipid metabolism and provides a promising strategy for fatty liver treatment.
H. Jiang: None.
This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China grants (82273983, 82130099, and 92253306), National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFA1303800), Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (23ZR1474700).