How do nutrients impact cells and organisms?

Annually 2.8 million adults die as a consequence of obesity-associated disease, highlighting an urgent need for increased understanding of pathogenesis due to obesity and more effective treatments. In response to sustained positive energy balance, fat cells store excess energy as lipids, leading to obesity. Obesity is associated with insensitivity to the glucose-lowering hormone insulin, ultimately causing chronically high levels of blood glucose. High blood glucose level is a unifying feature of obesity-associated metabolic diseases including diabetes. However, it is unclear how obesity causes insulin insensitivity and thereby high blood glucose level, at the molecular level. The PhD fellow will tackle this clinically important question by elucidating molecular changes in fat tissues and liver of diet-induced obese mice, naturally diabetic Mexican cavefish, and biopsies from obese and diabetic patients