Delineating insulin-action pathways

胰岛素激素可能与其在全身血糖动态平衡中的作用最相关，脂肪和肌肉细胞上的胰岛素结合受体在清除餐后血糖方面发挥着核心作用。胰岛素也是一种重要的生长因子，在许多类型的分化过程中发挥着强大的促有丝分裂作用。关于胰岛素如何引起这两种不同的生理反应，尤其是调节它们的信号通路在哪里有分歧，人们知之甚少。这项研究的目的是确定哪些胰岛素受体调节胰岛素的不同作用。这将通过使用基因组编辑来创建具有定制受体特征的细胞系来实现，还将通过使用胰岛素如何结合其不同受体的结构生物学知识来实现。

The hormone insulin is probably most associated with its role in whole body glucose homeostasis with insulin binding receptors on fat and muscle cells playing a central role in clearing post-prandial plasma glucose. Insulin is also an important growth factor exerting powerful mitogenic effects important during many types of differentiation. Very little is known about how insulin elicits these two separate physiological responses and in particular where the signaling pathways that regulate them diverge. The aim of this studentship is to determine which insulin receptors regulate different effects of insulin. This will be achieved by using genome editing to create cell lines that have bespoke receptor profiles and also by using structural biology knowledge of how insulin binds its different receptors.