Dr Daniel Fazakerley; Institute of Metabolic Science
My group are primarily interested how insulin regulates the transport of glucose into fat and muscle tissues. This process is important for lowering blood glucose after a meal, and impaired insulin-stimulated glucose uptake (or insulin resistance) is a risk factor for a number of metabolic disease including type 2 diabetes. In the first part of my talk, I will discuss how we have used genomics, proteomics and phosphoproteomics analyses to shed light on insulin-stimulated glucose transport and how it is dysregulated in insulin resistance. In the second part, I will talk about the importance of considering peri-cellular oxygen concentrations in cell culture. Contrary to popular belief, we have found that cell culture is not a state of artificially high oxygen tension, but that cells can be hypoxic under standard culture conditions. Increasing oxygen availability has profound effects on metabolism and the phenotypic characteristics of our cells.
Daniel undertook his PhD at university of Bath (2006-2010) with Prof Geoff Holman working on GLUT4 in muscle and translocation responses to insulin and exercise/contraction stimuli. After this, he was awarded a Henry Wellcome Fellowship to go to Sydney to work with Prof David James, first at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and then University of Sydney. During this time Daniel continued his work on GLUT4 trafficking, but this time interrogating the causes of insulin resistance using cultured cells and in vivo models, with a focus on mitochondrial oxidant driven insulin resistance. Daniel stayed in Sydney until 2019, when he was awarded an MRC/UKRI CDA to start his lab at the IMS, University of Cambridge. Daniel and his group focus primarily investigate mechanisms of insulin-regulated glucose uptake and insulin resistance.
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