What is it about?
Like humans, gut cells in fruit flies produce hormones. One class of hormones are called incretins because they help control the levels of circulating insulin. We found that repressing the fly gut NPF, a type of incretin, extended the lifespan of adult flies, and it do so by controlling the level of insulin.
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Photo by Tina Chelidze on Unsplash
Why is it important?
A number of drugs that mimic gut hormone in the incretin family are now available to manage diabetes and obesity. These control insulin but appear to also have affects on other aspects of our health that we are only beginning to understand. Our work suggests that such gut hormones may impact mammalian and human impact aging.
Perspectives
This work brings together the many treads of my research career. It synthesizes three hormonal systems that I study in the context of aging: juvenile hormone, insulin signaling and gut hormones. Successful aging requires animals to maintain homeostasis through the integration by hormones. We are using Drosophila to study such physiology using powerful genetic tools.
marc tatar
Brown University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Gut-to-brain regulation of
Drosophila
aging through neuropeptide F, insulin, and juvenile hormone, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2411987121.
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