Laboratory of Nutrigenomics, Monica Dus, PhD
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
The newest Dus Lab publication is a review on the literature connecting taste, diet composition, and obesity, published in Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism! The online version is available for reading now.
You can now read about Anoumid Vaziri’s work in Science Advances! See the press release and paper links below to learn about chromatin remodeling in taste cells in response to a high sugar diet environment.
Read Dr. Christina May’s newest paper featured in this eLife Digest! Learn how dopamine reward signaling changes in flies on a high sugar diet in this brief overview or check out the paper, titled “Dietary sugar inhibits satiation by decreasing the central processing of sweet taste”, here.
Check out this LSA News article that highlights the various reasons science is particularly important at the time of the COVID 19 pandemic. Dr. Monica Dus talks about why she restructured her molecular genetics class to reading and criticizing preprints relating to COVID 19 and how this created a unique opportunity for students to develop and apply their scientific literacy amid a plethora of fake news. She also talks about what her lab’s research can suggest about the effects of self-isolation on our diets.
https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/all-news/search-news/why-we-do-science.html
The first paper from Monica’s lab was released 07 May 2019! Titled “High Dietary Sugar Reshapes Sweet Taste to Promote Feeding Behavior in Drosophila melanogaster” graduate students Christina May and Anoumid Vaziri explore the changes in sweet taste neurons which lead to the behavioral output of overeating and obesity. Check out the interview with Michigan News and listen to Monica present the data at the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Have a listen.
Fat fruit flies: High-sugar diet deadens sweet tooth; promotes overeating, obesity in flies
To read the paper follow this link: https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(19)30492-9. Altmetrics rates the paper in the top 5% of all research outputs!
We like to think we can resist life’s temptations, but ever tried saying no to a cookie? It whispers to you, it calls to you. Sugar is a powerful force: it hijacks your brain and wins nearly all the time … I’ll talk about how this happens and also how, even if your mouth is fooled by fake sugar, your brain is not.
Watch Monica Dus give the 33rd NerdNite in Ann Arbor, MI or listen below!
