How do organisms make dietary choices?
Friday, May 14, 2010 - 08:02
in Biology & Nature
When given a choice, organisms will choose a diet that maintains a nutritional balance in tune with their needs. That choice, studied in fruit flies for the first time, is regulated by activity in a molecular pathway involved in ageing, cancer and diabetes. The research undertaken in fruit flies at the Buck Institute for Age Research has implications for humans, who share the same molecular pathway. The study, the first to be done in a genetically tractable lab animal, provides a way to begin the development of treatments that could 'reboot' metabolic pathways in individuals who are obese or suffer from diabetes. The study appears in the May 13, 2010 online edition of the journal Current Biology...