Grains for Guts

Your metabolism affects your weight and changes with your diet, but how? Researchers investigate using fruit fly larvae, focusing on Grain. Grain is a transcription factor (TF), a protein that binds to genes to alter their activity, and is the fruit fly equivalent of human TFs called GATAs, which control fat cell maturation. Gene sequence analysis found many sites for Grain binding on genes activated in response to sugar. RNA analysis and fluorescence microscopy of larvae showed that Grain was present and active in the fat body, a structure essential for fruit fly metabolism, as well as the gut (pictured, green) where it activated genes involved in fat production when sugar levels are low. Fruit fly larvae lacking Grain showed delayed development on a high sugar diet and disrupted fat metabolism on a low sugar diet. This helps unpick the role of GATA TFs in regulating diet-induced changes in metabolism.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image by Nicole Lamichane. Research by Krista Kokki and Nicole Lamichane, and colleagues
• Molecular and Integrative Biosciences Research Programme, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Genetics, October 2021