Validation of Drosophila as a model to identify anti-lipogenic and anti-diabetic compounds.

在过去十年中，人们认识到肥胖症对全球儿童和成人健康的威胁越来越大，并伴有许多威胁生命的并发症，包括糖尿病、心脏病、高血压和癌症。肥胖症是一种复杂的疾病，是遗传和环境因素相互作用的结果。然而，这些基因-基因和基因-环境相互作用的确切性质仍不清楚。Boulianne实验室利用果蝇（Drosophila melanogaster）中可用的强大遗传方法来识别导致肥胖果蝇的基因突变，并确定各种饮食（例如高脂肪和高糖）如何影响肥胖果蝇的表型。BioAspect Inc.是一家加拿大公司，其目标是为客户提供可用于药物发现的强大的体外和体内测定。这项研究的目的是确定果蝇模型是否可以用作体内平台，以确定可用于治疗肥胖和糖尿病的药物。具体来说，我们将使用Boulianne实验室开发的两种现有的肥胖苍蝇模型，并通过维持高糖饮食建立一种新的糖尿病模型。然后，我们将确定已知的抗糖尿病和抗肥胖药物是否在果蝇中有效，从而验证未来药物发现的模型。

In the past decade, obesity has been recognized as an increasing threat to the global health of children and adults, with numerous associated life-threatening complications, including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and cancer. Obesity is a complex disorder that is the result of the interaction between predisposing genetic and environmental factors. However, the precise nature of these gene-gene and gene-environment interactions, remain unclear. The Boulianne lab has taken advantage of powerful genetic approaches available in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to identify mutations in genes that give rise to obese flies and to determine how various diets (e.g. high fat and high sugar) affect the phenotypes of obese flies. BioAspect Inc. is a Canadian company whose goal is to provide customers with robust in vitro and in vivo assays that can be used for drug discovery. The goal of the proposed research is to determine whether Drosophila models can be used as an in vivo platform to identify drugs that can be used to treat obesity and diabetes. Specifically, we will use two existing fly models of obesity that have been developed in the Boulianne lab and establish a new model of diabetes by maintaining flies on a high sugar diet. We will then determine whether known anti-diabetic and anti-obesity drugs are effective in Drosophila thereby validating the model for future drug discovery.