Unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as bad eating behaviors and cigarette smoking, have major detrimental impacts on health. However, the interrelations between obesity and smoking are still not fully understood. We thus developed an experimental model of high-fat diet-fed obese C57BL/6 male mice chronically exposed to cigarette smoke. Our study eval...
Cancer cachexia is a complex multifactorial syndrome marked by a continuous depletion of skeletal muscle mass associated, in some cases, with a reduction in fat mass. It is irreversible by nutritional support alone and affects up to 74% of patients with cancer&mdash / dependent on the underlying type of cancer&mdash / and is associated with physica...
The insulin&ndash / IGF-1 signaling (IIS) pathway is conserved throughout multicellular organisms and regulates many traits, including aging, reproduction, feeding, metabolism, stress resistance, and growth. Here, we present evidence of a survival-sustaining role for IIS in a subset of gut cells in Drosophila melanogaster, namely the intestinal ste...
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans possesses a unique (with various isoforms) FOXO transcription factor DAF-16, which is notorious for its role in aging and its regulation by the insulin-PI3K-AKT pathway. In humans, five genes (including a protein-coding pseudogene) encode for FOXO transcription factors that are targeted by the PI3K-AKT axis, such...
Published in Journal of lipid research
Lipid rafts regulate the initiation of cellular metabolic and signaling pathways by organizing the pathway components in ordered microdomains on the cell surface. Cellular responses regulated by lipid rafts range from physiological to pathological, and the success of a therapeutic approach targeting "pathological" lipid rafts depends on the ability...
Published in Biochemistry (Moscow)
Formation of normal tissue structure, homeostasis maintenance, and tissue damage repair require proliferation and differentiation of stem cells. A distinctive feature of these cells is a unique organization of metabolic pathways, in which contribution of energy production mechanisms to the general cellular metabolism is principally different from t...
Toxoplasma gondii is a ubiquitous parasitic protist found in a wide variety of hosts, including a large proportion of the human population. Beyond an acute phase which is generally self-limited in immunocompetent individuals, the ability of the parasite to persist as a dormant stage, called bradyzoite, is an important aspect of toxoplasmosis. Not o...
Dendritic cells (DCs) increase their metabolic dependence on glucose and glycolysis to support their maturation, activation-associated cytokine production, and T-cell stimulatory capacity. We have previously shown that this increase in glucose metabolism can be initiated by both Toll-like receptor (TLR) and C-type lectin receptor (CLR) agonists. In...
Overweight and obesity accompanies up to 70% of pregnancies and is a strong risk factor for offspring metabolic disease. Maternal obesity-associated inflammation and lipid profile are hypothesized as important contributors to excess offspring liver and skeletal muscle lipid deposition and oxidative stress. Here, we tested whether dams expressing th...
Published in Genes & development
Metabolism and development must be closely coupled to meet the changing physiological needs of each stage in the life cycle. The molecular mechanisms that link these pathways, however, remain poorly understood. Here we show that the Drosophila estrogen-related receptor (dERR) directs a transcriptional switch in mid-pupae that promotes glucose oxida...
