Energy metabolism: mechanisms, diversity and evolution

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Energy metabolism is central to all biological functions. In animals, the physiology and biochemistry involved in energy metabolism is based on a conserved blueprint which is adjusted to serve different functions (e.g. among tissues) and wide-ranging performances (e.g. locomotion). I am interested in how physiological systems and biochemical pathways involved in energetics vary among individuals and how they are adjusted over evolutionary time to generate the diversity observed in animal performance. To address these questions, I study the energetics of flight in insects. Insect flight is a good model to study energy metabolism because flight performance varies widely across species and it is the most expensive activity performed by animals. In bees and wasps, the energy requirements of flight muscle cells vary several-fold across species; nevertheless, we do not know the underlying mechanisms that explain this variation. Using various approaches developed to integrate the fields of physiology and evolution, I investigate how characteristics of a species and an individual determine the energy requirements for flight. Another major component of my work studies the cellular basis of energetics diversity. Variation in cellular energy production involves customizing metabolic pathways by changing the properties or quantities of the enzymes that form the pathways. I study the variation of these proteins in flight muscle cells and how it relates to species and individual performance, ultimately connecting this variation with how the involved genes are regulated. Finally, I examine physiologies connected to muscle energy use, namely fuel storage and delivery. The implications of this work are fundamental to our understanding of diversity in animal energetics and how it evolves. My research will provide information on flight performance of pollinators and the variables affecting it.