“You have to eat something”. Everybody knows this sentence from his/her mother/grandmother. And it is actually true. Starvation is life-threatening. So no wonder that the human body takes this matter quite serious and responds with some emergency plans for energy conservation, like e.g. reduction of metabolism and body temperature. But starvation induced reduction in body temperature can not only be found in humans and other mammals but also in ectotherms, such as mosquitoes, cockroaches, and rainbow trout. What about Drosophila (fruit flies)? Yujiro Umezaki, et al. tested if Drosophila also shows starvation-induced body temperature reduction and if so, how they control it. Drosophila are so small, that their body temperature is mainly regulated by the ambient temperature. The small flies actively move to temperature regimes which suits their needs. Yujiro Umezaki, et al. showed, that starvation results in a lower preferred temperature in Drosophila. This process is like other starvation-induced behaviors controlled by the insulin/insulin-like growth factor (IGF) signaling pathway. (It is the same pathway we had in the last paper of the day, for the longevity and egg quality in C.elegans). To make a long story short: Starvation in Drosophila results in an increased expression of insulin-like peptide 6 (Ilp6) in the fat body (fly liver and adipose tissues). Ilp6 then alternates the “warm sensing” (TrpA1) channels of the temperature controlling neurons (anterior cells), so that the “too warm” threshold is decreased. Therefore, the preferred temperature is lower. What is most interesting, and the taking-home message for today is that the IGF signaling pathway is well conserved in vertebrates and invertebrates. It has been shown that starvation-induced decrease in body temperature in mice is controlled by IGF receptors, and Drosophila Ilp6 is functionally and structurally similar to IGFs. Therefore, it seems like the mechanism underlying the starvation-induced reduction in body temperature may be evolutionarily conserved between different species. So your body response to starving is not so different from the body response in Drosophila.
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IdeaI love to increase my general science knowledge by reading papers from different fields of science. Here I share some of them. Archiv
März 2018
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