A Comprehensive Curated Reaction Map of Leptin Signaling Pathway

Leptin, a peptide hormone, regulates endocrine function and maintains body weight homeostasis by regulating food intake and energy expenditure via hypothalamus-mediated effects. Impairment in leptin signaling induces obesity, a major health problem worldwide. Leptin signaling regulates other physiological processes such as angiogenesis, hematopoiesis and also has effects on the reproductive, cardiovascular and immune systems. Despite its biomedical importance, a comprehensive catalog of the signaling events activated by leptin is not available as a public resource. Therefore, we initiated cataloging of the molecular reactions in this pathway to develop a detailed reaction map of leptin signaling. For the benefit of scientific community, we provided the leptin signaling pathway through NetPath (http://www.netpath.org), a freely accessible pathway resource previously developed by our group. We anticipate that leptin/leptin receptor signaling map and the data comprising these signaling events will enable future biomedical investigations.