PRiSM SIGNED

Project "PRiSM" data sheet

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 Partnership

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 Project objective

Sensory perception has recently emerged as a master regulator of integrative physiology and behavior, including feeding, by controlling fundamental and pleiotropic regulatory processes of energy and glucose homeostasis. Further, sensory perception is altered in obesity and type 2 diabetes, and childhood obesity correlates with early sensory deficit. Along this line, the discovery of the developmental origins of health and diseases revealed that metabolic diseases have recognized roots in the very early stages of life and can be predisposed to by changes in the perinatal hormonal and nutritional environments, such as occur in cases of maternal obesity and unhealthy diet. In this context, an accumulating body of evidence suggests that maternal health and nutrition could negatively impinge on the development of sensory perception, and subsequently, on the lifelong regulation of sensory-dependent control of metabolic, physiological, and behavioral regulatory processes. This innovative research program consists of four autonomous but complementary projects aimed at (1) deciphering the exact central regulatory processes mediating sensory control of feeding behavior and glucose homeostasis, (2) uncovering the influence of maternal health and nutrition on lifelong sensory regulation of metabolism, and (3) & (4) investigating two independent, yet synergistic, mechanisms that could mediate developmental programming of sensory metabolic regulation. This research program will employ a technology framework of physiological, behavioral, and developmental analyses in mice in concert with state-of-the-art systems neuroscience approaches, including optogenetics, chemogenetics, and in vivo calcium imaging. Collectively, the overarching goals of this research program are to provide new insights into the precise regulatory processes of sensory metabolic regulation and to shed light on critical basic mechanisms underlying the developmental programming of metabolic diseases.