Rapid switch of hepatic fatty acid metabolism from oxidation to esterification during diurnal feeding of meal-fed rats correlates with changes in the properties of acetyl-CoA carboxylase, but not of carnitine palmitoyltransferase I.

The effects of the ingestion of a meal on the partitioning of hepatic fatty acids between oxidation and esterification were studied in vivo for meal-fed rats. The time course for the reversal of the starved state was extremely rapid and the process was complete within 2 h, in marked contrast with the reversal of the effects of starvation in rats fed ad libitum [A. M. B. Moir and V. A. Zammit (1993) Biochem. J. 289, 49-55]. This rapid reversal occurred in spite of the fact that, in the liver of the meal-fed animals before feeding, a similar degree of partitioning of fatty acids in favour of oxidation was observed as in 24 h-starved rats (previously fed ad libitum). This suggested that the lower degree of ketonaemia observed in meal-fed rats before a meal is not due to the inability of acylcarnitine formation to compete successfully with esterification of fatty acids to the glycerol moiety. Investigation of the possible mechanisms that could contribute towards the rapid switching-off of fatty acid oxidation revealed that this was correlated with a very rapid rise and overshoot in hepatic malonyl-CoA concentration, but not with any change in the activity, or sensitivity to malonyl-CoA, of the mitochondrial overt carnitine palmitoyltransferase (CPT I). The role of these two parameters in the reversal of fasting-induced hepatic fatty acid oxidation was thus the inverse of that observed previously for refed 24 h-starved rats. The rapid increase in [malonyl-CoA] was accompanied by an immediate and complete reversion of the kinetic characteristics (Ka for citrate, expressed/total activity ratio) of acetyl-CoA carboxylase to those found in the post-meal animals, again in contrast with the time course observed in refed 24 h-starved rats [A. M. B. Moir and V. A. Zammit (1990) Biochem. J. 272, 511-517]. The rapidity with which these changes occurred was specific to the partitioning of acyl-CoA; the meal-induced diversion of glycerolipids towards phospholipid synthesis and the acute inhibition of the fractional rate of triacylglycerol secretion occurred with very similar time courses to those observed upon refeeding of 24 h-starved rats. The results confirm the central role played by differences in the dynamics of changes in hepatic malonyl-CoA concentration, and CPT I sensitivity to it, in determining the route through which ingested glucose is converted into hepatic glycogen upon refeeding of starved rats which had previously been meal-fed or fed ad libitum.