Diet and Germline Progenitors

生物体吃东西是为了生存，饮食提供生长和维持的物质。然而，复杂 营养素反应信号通路网络确保营养素得到适当分配和利用 支持细胞过程，如增殖和分化，与需求相称 发育阶段和生物体需求。我们知道，对饮食的反应信号是 膳食成分的功能性供应，因为可以操纵信号通路来克服 营养不足，否则会损害这些过程。尽管基本 饮食和代谢信号的性质，关键饮食因素的身份，它们如何触发特定的 体内信号通路，以及它们如何在生物体代谢中调节细胞行为 我们对此知之甚少。我们正在使用C来解决这个问题。线虫生殖系祖细胞作为一种 模型系统生殖细胞对饮食非常敏感，这使它们成为理想的模型。茎和 祖细胞是基于饮食的信号传导的重要靶点，因为它们必须持续维持 组织和器官在不断变化的条件下。C. elegans提供了实验优势，包括 简单的基因和饮食控制此外，C. elegans laboratory diet，E.大肠杆菌，本身就是一种 遗传上易驯服的有机体使用互补的候选人和公正的方法，该项目 将确定驱动祖细胞积累的饮食成分。饮食提示将与特定的 已知（胰岛素、TGF-β和TOR）或尚未涉及的信号传导途径和细胞应答 机制等该项目还将解决生殖系祖细胞的强大积累， 影响后代。由于代谢的高度保守性， 营养反应信号在进化上不同的生物体，我们的研究将有助于 了解维持细胞增殖池的基本机制， 对人类生育、发育、退行性疾病、癌症、干细胞生物学的影响， 寄生生物学

Organisms eat to live, and diet provides material for growth and maintenance. However, complex webs of nutrient-responsive signaling pathways ensure that nutrients are properly allocated and utilized to support cellular processes such as proliferation and differentiation, commensurate with the demands of developmental stage and organismal needs. We know that signaling in response to diet is key to functional provisioning of dietary components, since signaling pathways can be manipulated to overcome nutritional deficits that would otherwise impair these processes. However, despite the fundamental nature of diet and metabolic signaling, the identity of key dietary factors, how they trigger particular signaling pathways in vivo, and how they operate within organismal metabolism to regulate cell behavior are poorly understood. We are addressing this gap using C. elegans germline progenitor cells as a model system. Germ cells are exquisitely sensitive to diet, making them an ideal model. Stem and progenitor cells are important targets of diet-based signaling, since they must continuously maintain tissues and organs under changing conditions. C. elegans offers experimental advantages including facile genetic and dietary manipulation. In addition, the C. elegans laboratory diet, E. coli, is itself a genetically tractable organism. Using complementary candidate and unbiased approaches, this project will identify dietary components that drive progenitor accumulation. Dietary cues will be linked to specific known (insulin, TGF-beta and TOR) or yet-to-be-implicated signaling pathways and cellular response mechanisms. The project will also address how robust accumulation of germline progenitors, in response to parental diet, impacts subsequent generations. Due to the highly conserved nature of metabolism and nutrient-reponsive signaling across evolutionarily divergent organisms, our studies will contribute to the understanding of fundamental mechanisms that maintain proliferating pools of cells, with possible implications in humans for fertility, development, degenerative diseases, cancer, stem cell biology, and parasite biology.