PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

'Diabetic flies' can speed up disease-fighting research

Fruit flies make good stand-ins for humans in diabetes treatment tests, UMD study finds

2013-11-07
(Press-News.org) Contact information: Lee Tune
ltune@umd.edu
301-405-4679
University of Maryland
'Diabetic flies' can speed up disease-fighting research Fruit flies make good stand-ins for humans in diabetes treatment tests, UMD study finds

COLLEGE PARK, Md - In a finding that has the potential to significantly speed up diabetes research, scientists at the University of Maryland have discovered that fruit flies respond to insulin at the cellular level much like humans do, making these common, easily bred insects good subjects for laboratory experiments in new treatments for diabetes.

The common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster looks like a sesame seed with wings, produces offspring by the thousands, and lives for around a month. These creatures don't resemble humans in any obvious way, but they share more than sixty percent of our genetic code. And scientists like UMD's Leslie Pick and Georgeta Crivat are finding that those similarities control basic biological processes that work alike in both species.

Drosophila melanogaster is easy to breed, raise and study in the laboratory, so it's widely used in research. Pick, chairman of the UMD Entomology Department, conducts experiments that use information about the fruit fly's relatively simple genome to illuminate biological processes in humans. Her recent research focuses on whether fruit flies use the hormone insulin the same way humans and other mammals do.

"We hope to use all the genetic tools we have available for flies, and the fact that we can breed them in huge numbers, very fast, to set up efficient screening tests for assessing new diabetes treatments," Pick said.

In a new study published Nov. 6 in the peer-reviewed online journal PLOS One, Pick and her co-authors found the basic mechanisms that humans use to regulate blood sugar – the process that goes awry in diabetes – are indeed shared with flies.

In humans, insulin controls the production and movement of glucose, the form of sugar that fuels mammalian cells. The movement of glucose into individual cells begins when insulin binds to a specialized insulin receptor on a cell. That causes a sugar transporter called GLUT4 to move from the cell interior to its membrane, allowing glucose to flow through the membrane, moving from the bloodstream into the cell. In diabetics, this process fails and sugar accumulates in the blood. In the main types of diabetes - Type 1, in which the body cannot produce insulin, and Type 2, in which the cells stop responding to insulin – high blood sugar levels can gravely damage many organs. The disease is one of the world's most serious health problems.

Fruit flies' systems are very different than humans. Glucose is not their main form of sugar, and they don't have blood like mammals do, so researchers were not sure whether insulin played a role in their cells that is similar to humans. But in a 2009 experiment, Pick and colleagues used genetic engineering techniques to disable five insulin-like fruit fly genes.

The resulting "diabetic flies" had many symptoms of diabetes in humans, Pick said. "They were very, very small and sluggish; they had decreased body fat and higher levels of circulating blood sugar; and they did not reproduce very well." Other researchers trying to understand diabetes have performed similar experiments on mammals, which usually did not survive the genetic alteration, Pick said.

"The flies are not fine, but they do live," Pick said. That meant more diabetes-related experiments, using flies instead of mammals, might be possible.

To be sure, the researchers needed to know whether the cellular processes taking place were the same in both species. Pick and her colleagues turned to Samuel Cushman of the National Institutes of Health, the co-discoverer of the glucose transport process involving GLUT4 in humans. Combining their expertise, the two research teams inserted GLUT4 into fruit flies, using a fluorescent tag to mark the GLUT4 molecules.

To the scientists' surprise, although this protein is foreign to the fruit flies, their cells moved GLUT4 to the cell membrane exactly as human cells do in response to insulin. Under a high powered microscope that picks up the fluorescent GLUT4,"You can actually track its movement onto the cell membrane."

"It's pretty amazing," Pick said. "We hoped that would happen, but there are so many differences between flies and mammals that we ourselves were skeptical."

The researchers' next step is to find the sugar transporter that fills the role of GLUT4 in fruit flies, Pick said, and "to use the fly model to see if we can screen for compounds that promote sugar uptake, alone or working together with insulin, to treat diabetes more effectively."



INFORMATION:



"Am not I a fly like thee? Or art thou not a man like me?" -William Blake, 1789

The research was funded by the March of Dimes.

UMD/CMNS

Media contacts:

Leon Tune
301-405-4679
ltune@umd.edu

Heather Dewar
301-405-9267
hdewar@umd.edu

Georgette Crivat, Vladimir A. Lizunov, Caroline R. Li, Karin Stenkula, Joshua Zimmerberg, Samuel W. Cushman and Leslie Pick, "Insulin stimulates translocation of human GLIUT4 to the membrane in fat bodies of transgenic Drosophila melanogaster," published in PLOS One Nov. 6, 2013.

Full text available on publication at: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0077953

For a pre-publication embargoed draft of the study, email ltune@umd.edu or hdewar@umd.edu

The Pick laboratory at the University of Maryland http://entomology.umd.edu/picklab



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Children who have autism far more likely to have tummy troubles

2013-11-07
Children who have autism far more likely to have tummy troubles The gastrointestinal problems are linked to problem behaviors in children with autism, developmental delay Children with autism experience gastrointestinal (GI) ...

Speaking a second language may delay different dementias

2013-11-07
Speaking a second language may delay different dementias MINNEAPOLIS – In the largest study on the topic to date, research shows that speaking a second language may delay the onset of three types of dementias. The research is published in the November 6, 2013, ...

Floods didn't provide nitrogen 'fix' for earliest crops in frigid North

2013-11-07
Floods didn't provide nitrogen 'fix' for earliest crops in frigid North Floods didn't make floodplains fertile during the dawn of human agriculture in the Earth's far north because the waters were virtually devoid of nitrogen, unlike other areas of the globe scientists ...

Monkeys use minds to move 2 virtual arms

2013-11-07
Monkeys use minds to move 2 virtual arms DURHAM, N.C. – In a study led by Duke researchers, monkeys have learned to control the movement of both arms on an avatar using just their brain activity. The findings, published Nov. 6, 2013, in the ...

X-rays reveal inner structure of the Earth's ancient magma ocean

2013-11-07
X-rays reveal inner structure of the Earth's ancient magma ocean First look into molten basalt at deep mantle conditions This news release is available in German. Using the world's most brilliant X-ray source, scientists have for the first ...

Stress makes snails forgetful

2013-11-07
Stress makes snails forgetful Snail study reveals that stress is bad for memory New research on pond snails has revealed that high levels of stress can block memory processes. Researchers from the University of Exeter and the University of Calgary trained snails ...

Annual car crash deaths in England and Wales have fallen 40 percent in 50 years

2013-11-07
Annual car crash deaths in England and Wales have fallen 40 percent in 50 years But may still contribute to social class and gender differences in life expectancy The annual number of car crash deaths in England and Wales has plunged by 41% over the past ...

Crime associated with higher mortality rates

2013-11-07
Crime associated with higher mortality rates The new study, published in the journal PLOS ONE shows that people with drug-related criminal records in Norway have a mortality rate that can be up to 15 times higher than people ...

Discovery of HIV 'invisibility cloak' reveals new treatment opportunities

2013-11-07
Discovery of HIV 'invisibility cloak' reveals new treatment opportunities Scientists have discovered a molecular invisibility cloak that enables HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, to hide inside cells of the body without triggering the body's natural defence systems. ...

Study uncovers new explanation for infection susceptibility in newborns

2013-11-07
Study uncovers new explanation for infection susceptibility in newborns CINCINNATI – Cells that allow helpful bacteria to safely colonize the intestines of newborn infants also suppress their immune systems to make them more vulnerable ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Exercise as an anti-ageing intervention to avoid detrimental impact of mental fatigue

UMass Amherst Nursing Professor Emerita honored as ‘Living Legend’

New guidelines aim to improve cystic fibrosis screening

Picky eaters by day, buffet by night: Butterfly, moth diets sync to plant aromas

Pennington Biomedical’s Dr. Leanne Redman honored with the E. V. McCollum Award from the American Society for Nutrition

CCNY physicists uncover electronic interactions mediated via spin waves

Researchers’ 3D-printing formula may transform future of foam

Nurture more important than nature for robotic hand

Drug-delivering aptamers target leukemia stem cells for one-two knockout punch

New study finds that over 95% of sponsored influencer posts on Twitter were not disclosed

New sea grant report helps great lakes fish farmers navigate aquaculture regulations

Strain “trick” improves perovskite solar cells’ efficiency

How GPS helps older drivers stay on the roads

Estrogen and progesterone stimulate the body to make opioids

Dancing with the cells – how acoustically levitating a diamond led to a breakthrough in biotech automation

Machine learning helps construct an evolutionary timeline of bacteria

Cellular regulator of mRNA vaccine revealed... offering new therapeutic options

Animal behavioral diversity at risk in the face of declining biodiversity

Finding their way: GPS ignites independence in older adult drivers

Antibiotic resistance among key bacterial species plateaus over time

‘Some insects are declining but what’s happening to the other 99%?’

Powerful new software platform could reshape biomedical research by making data analysis more accessible

Revealing capillaries and cells in living organs with ultrasound

American College of Physicians awards $260,000 in grants to address equity challenges in obesity care

Researchers from MARE ULisboa discover that the European catfish, an invasive species in Portugal, has a prolonged breeding season, enhancing its invasive potential

Rakesh K. Jain, PhD, FAACR, honored with the 2025 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research

Solar cells made of moon dust could power future space exploration

Deporting immigrants may further shrink the health care workforce

Border region emergency medical services in migrant emergency care

Resident physician intentions regarding unionization

[Press-News.org] 'Diabetic flies' can speed up disease-fighting research
Fruit flies make good stand-ins for humans in diabetes treatment tests, UMD study finds