Lessons from "lower" organisms: what worms, flies, and zebrafish can teach us about human energy metabolism.
A pandemic of metabolic diseases (atherosclerosis, diabetes mellitus, and obesity), unleashed by multiple social and economic factors beyond the control of most individuals, threatens to diminish human life span for the first time in the modern era. Given the redundancy and inherent complexity of processes regulating the uptake, transport, catabolism, and synthesis of nutrients, magic bullets to target these diseases will be hard to find. Recent studies using the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, the fly Drosophila melanogaster, and the zebrafish Danio rerio indicate that these "lower" metazoans possess unique attributes that should help in identifying, investigating, and even validating new pharmaceutical targets for these diseases. We summarize findings in these organisms that shed light on highly conserved pathways of energy homeostasis.
Schlegel
Amnon
A
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Division of Endocrinology at the University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America. amnon.schlegel@ucsf.edu
Stainier
Didier Y R
DY
D000818:Animals; D004175:Diptera / Q000378:metabolism*; D004734:Energy Metabolism; D005216:Fat Body / Q000378:metabolism; D006376:Helminths / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D015398:Signal Transduction; D015027:Zebrafish / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*