Altered feeding differentially regulates circadian rhythms and energy metabolism in liver and muscle of rats

Abstract

Energy metabolism follows a diurnal pattern responding to the light/dark cycle and food availability. This study investigated the impact of restricting feeding to the daylight hours and feeding a high fat diet on circadian clock (bmal1, dbp, tef and e4bp4) and metabolic (pepck, fas, ucp3, pdk4) gene expression and markers of energy metabolism in muscle and liver of rats. The results show that in chow-fed rats switched to daylight feeding, the peak diurnal expression of genes in liver was shifted by 6–12h while expression of these genes in muscle remained in a similar phase to rats feeding ad libitum. High fat feeding during the daylight hours had limited effect on clock gene expression in liver or muscle but shifted the peak expression of metabolic genes (pepck, fas) in liver by 6–12h. The differential effects of daylight feeding on gene and protein expression in muscle and liver were accompanied by an 8% reduction in whole body energy expenditure, a 20–30% increased glycogen content during the light phase in muscle of day-fed rats and increased adipose tissue deposition per gram food consumed. These data demonstrate that a mismatch of feeding and light/dark cycle disrupts tissue metabolism in muscle with significant consequences for whole body energy homeostasis.