Research Support
SPIRITS

We are what we eat: Japan-UK research network for dietary responses governing growth, disease, and homeostasis

Project Gist

Deciphering complex interactions of diets with animal growth, disease, and homeostasis by using a model organism Drosophila melanogaster

Keywords

Diet, Growth, Disease, Homeostasis, Drosophila

Background and Purpose

Organisms have the potential to accomplish development in spite of dramatic changes of nutrients, which ensures their survival and reproductive success. We are interested in understanding mechanisms at cellular, organ, and systemic levels, which causally link various nutrient conditions to growth, diseases or homeostasis (body temperature control). Towards this goal, members of this SPIRITS project at Kyoto University and Hiroshima Research Center for Healthy Aging (HiHA) use a model organism, Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly), which has contributed enormously to our understanding of animal development and life-history traits, and its diet, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (budding yeast). We aim at establishing collaborations with research scientists at MRC LMS (The Medical Research Council, London Institute of Medical Sciences), who have closely related scientific interests.

Project Achievements

Thanks to the SPIRITS program, graduate students and faculty members of Kyoto University, HiHA, and MRC LMS have been making intense interactions. Questions we have shared include how developing animals cope with nutritional changes and grow mature, how digestive/absorptive cells in the gut detect nutrients and what is the molecular identity of the nutrient-sensing mechanism, how commensal bacteria contribute to energy metabolism and thermoregulatory behavior, and how diet-mediated obesity and insulin resistance lead to striking enhancement of tumor overgrowth, secondary tumor formation, and tissue waste. We have been discussing ongoing work and future collaborations. Hopefully, we will be able to explore whether or not our findings in D. melanogaster are evolutionally conserved in mammals in future.

Future Prospects

Our new aim is to understand how “the nutrition history” in juvenile stages impacts later life events at molecular, cellular and systemic levels, and is also to ameliorate the eventual deterioration of organismal functions later in life or even in the next generation. To attain our goal, we are expanding our international network further.

Figure

MRC LMS/Kyoto University SPIRITS Project Workshop

Principal Investigator

UEMURA Tadashi

・UEMURA Tadashi
・Graduate School of Biostudies
・Tadashi Uemura received a doctorate degree from Kyoto University and completed postdoctoral training at UCSF. He is now a professor in the Graduate School of Biostudies at Kyoto University. He has been investigating neuronal dendrite morphogenesis, planar cell polarity and currently how nutritional environments affect animal development and life-history traits.
http://www.cellpattern.lif.kyoto-u.ac.jp/
 http://www.miguelaliagalab.com/news/