Bloggo Science ~ LIRKO Wars Edition

Well, a little back and forth is going on these days over the LIRKO mouse.  What's a LIRKO mouse?  Well, the acronym says it all, LIRKO = Liver Insulin Receptor Knock Out.  This mouse's liver doesn't see insulin.

So back in May, Peter/Hyperlipid posted about the LIRKO mouse,  LIRKO mice (1).   This post referenced this study:  Loss of Insulin Signaling in Hepatocytes Leads to Severe Insulin Resistance and Progressive Hepatic Dysfunction.  Almost simultaneously he posted  LIRKO mice (2) which dealt with this study:  High Circulating Leptin Receptors with Normal Leptin Sensitivity in Liver-specific Insulin Receptor Knock-out (LIRKO) Mice.    (A peeve:  The full texts of both of the studies referenced in these posts are available free online.  Why not link directly to the full text?)

About a week or so ago, continuing with his own dismantling of TWICHOO, Stephan Guyenet posted Does High Circulating Insulin Drive Body Fat Accumulation? Answers from Genetically Modified Mice.  Single line smackdown:  A lot of hyperinsulinemic mice out there aren't accumulating fat tissue as a result.  One of the gen mod mice Stephan mentions just so happened to be Peter's friend LIRKO.  

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