Scientists make fruit fly model to help unravel the genetics of human diabetes

As rates of obesity, diabetes and diseases of epidemic proportions in the United States in recent years have achieved, scientists from different angles to determine the causes and factors involved in this public health crisis. While helping sedentary lifestyle and a diet high in sugar and fat significantly to higher prices caused by diabetes, genetic factors make certain people more vulnerable than any other disease, diabetes.

Researchers at the University of Maryland using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model system to disentangle which genes and how are involved in the metabolic changes leading to insulin resistance and diabetes in adults in the man. ) Our research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (November 2, published Leslie Pick, Associate Professor, Department of Entomology, and his colleagues describe how they altered genes in fruit flies to avoid loss model of insulin production, as in human type 1 diabetes to be seen.

"These mutant flies exhibit symptoms very similar to human diabetes," explains Dr. Pick. "They have the characteristic that elevated blood glucose. Moreover, they are lazy and seem to break their fat energy reservoir, even if they eat - a situation that would be stored in the normal animal fat is not broken down to.

Select and his team, the UM researchers were Dr. Hua Zhang, Liu and Jingnan Dr. Caroline Li, associate professor Bahram Momen (biostatistics and environmental science) and former associate of the Johns Hopkins University, Professor Ronald Remove Kohanski used genetic approaches to a group of five genes, insulin-like peptides (Drosophila insulin-like peptides, DILP) in the fly Drosophila melanogaster. "If we compare the mutant flies with a normal, hungry, they look the same, because both their fat break to recharge your batteries," says Pick. This mimics a clinical feature of patients with diabetes who saves the fact that nutrients are present, but the body can not use a starvation response and thus increase the energy reduction to obtain nutrients.

"We can genetically manipulated flies as a model for defects, which suggests to understand diabetes and human genes to identify and focus of pharmacological intervention," Dr. Pick, who also flies to study of type 2 diabetes and other syndromes of resistance to insulin.

Model organisms have been extremely valuable for studying the mechanisms of human diseases, because the regulatory mechanisms and to elucidate the physiology are highly conserved throughout the animal kingdom. The relationship between fly and human genes is so close that the human genes, including disease genes can often be designed to fly against their colleagues.

'Way over between flies and humans shared that we would never have to wait before starting to identify genes, "says Pick. With a flight as a model system has advantages of faster testing on other animals such as mice, since experiments can in which thousands of flies and, as scientists are able to combine different mutations is much easier. This could be very useful for understanding the etiology of type 2 diabetes, where scientists believe that several genes play a role.

"When we analyzed the genetic mutation that removes asked these genes, we would fly them have no symptoms of diabetes in humans, and it turns out that what she said" do not pick. "This tells us there are certain things that are very similar. We hope that this provides a valuable resource for identifying gene targets scientific community for the treatment of diabetes. "