Location of adipose tissue in an adult fly revealed by GFP
Cells need to constantly adapt to their environmental conditions. Animal cells accomplish this via signal transduction pathways - networks of proteins that work together to
(1) collect information about the environment,
(2) to process this information by somehow integrating it and
(3) to impact cellular behaviour, either by affecting cellular transcription or by modulating the activity of cellular proteins.
Our lab is interested in understanding the signalling pathways that control two important cellular processes - cell growth and metabolism. These two processes are tightly linked because cellular growth is energetically very expensive and therefore metabolically significant. They are also linked moleculary, by signalling pathways such as the insulin/IGF signalling pathway, which control both processes. From the medical point of view, these signalling pathways are highly relevant - aberrant insulin signalling results in cancer and metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. For instance, the insulin signalling pathway (which includes Pi3K and TOR) is hyperactivated in 80% of all human cancers.
Since these signalling pathways control basic cellular processes, they are highly conserved from fruit-flies to mammals. Both the molecular components are conserved, as well as the physiological outputs of the pathways. This allows us to study these signalling networks in Drosophila, taking advantage of its powerful genetic tools. What we learn has a good chance of being relevant for mammalian biology. We make use of a combination of advanced genomic technologies such as microarray profiling and ChIP/chip, together with genetic tools such as homologous-recombination to generate mutant animals and study their physiology and development.