The Sweet Life

We all get thirsty, but did you know thirst is often linked to high sugar diets? Today, high sugar diets are a major global issue for human health, underlying many metabolic diseases, such as diabetes. Using fruit flies MRC LMS researchers have revealed that regularly feeding them lots of sugar caused dehydration, an increase in blood purine and accumulation of its breakdown product uric acid as crystals or ‘kidney stones’ within the renal tubule (fruit fly ‘kidneys’). Accumulated uric acid due to an increased sugar intake is seen here as the dark areas in the renal tubules pictured. The team went on to discover that dietary sugar was similarly associated with human kidney function and blood purine levels. Understanding the purine pathway may provide researchers with new targets for drugs that prevent the build-up of uric acid crystals improving health while reducing high dietary sugar-induced deaths.

Read more about the MRC LMS groups –  including Helena Cochemé's Redox Metabolism group – in the Summer of Science campaign on Twitter and elsewhere using #SummerOfScience

Written by Lauren Green

Lauren Green

Writer

Lauren is the current MRC LMS Science Communications Intern and is a student at the University of Southampton reading Biology. Her favourite topics to learn include genetics, cancer and physiology.

• Image from work by Esther van Dam, Lucie A.G. van Leeuwen and Eliano dos Santos, and colleagues
• Redox Metabolism Group, MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Published in Cell Metabolism, April 2020