Professor Kim Jae-woo’s Research Team: Publication in PNAS The research findings of a study led by Professor Kim Jae-woo (College of Medicine, Yonsei University) and Dr. Lee You-jeong have recently been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study discovered MGAT1, an enzyme that aggravates non-alcoholic fatty liver by assisting the fat to accumulate in livers of patients who have been diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. According to the results from mice experiments, MGAT1 was not observed in normal or healthy mice; while it was highly identified in those with fatty liver. Such metabolic syndrome as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and hyperlipidemia constitute a significant threat to people in the modern society. Around 20% of the Korean population lives with such syndromes, and they are known to cause cerebrovascular disease when neglected and result in death in extreme cases. Professor Kim noted that the discovery of MGAT1 enzyme was possible from investigating the genes of mice that did not get diagnosed with metabolic syndrome despite a high-fat diet. In the livers of these mice with high-fat diets, the PPAR-gamma gene was observed; and this was found to induce the revelation of MGAT1. The degree of fatty liver was alleviated as a result of controlling this revelation.