Request for Funding

Medical Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2004

Mentor: Cai Li, Ph.D.
Department: Physiology and Internal Medicine
Room number: Y8.222
Mail Code: 8854
Phone number: X83340
E-mail: Cai.Li@UTSouthwestern.edu
Project title: Hormonal control of adipose tissue development and mammalian body weight
Human subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable): N/A

Animal subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable): 0873-03-07-1

Project Type (patient-based research, animal-based research, or basic research; this characterization is only to permit a general classification for grouping similar types of projects)
Basic research/animal-based research

Brief Description of Project:
Leptin is an adipose tissue-derived hormone with potent effects reducing food intake and body weight. Leptin acts by binding to its receptor. Mutation of leptin or its receptor results in massive obesity and many complications, such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Two related projects are available:

1. How leptin action is modulated by other factors controlling adipose tissue development:
Knockout of an extracellular matrix-associated protein called SPARC in mice results in increased adipose tissue mass. This project aims to determine the role of SPARC in leptin action. Leptin will be over-expressed in wild type and knockout mice to determine fat and weight loss as well as other leptin effects;

2. How extracellular domain of leptin receptor affects leptin action:
The extracellular domain of leptin receptor is comprised of more than eight hundred amino acids. Interestingly, a single amino acid mutation within a region not involved in leptin binding completely abolishes receptor function. This project involves the construction of different receptor constructs and uses a sensitive luciferase reporter assay to determine the structural basis of leptin receptor required for leptin activation.

Previous Research Activities or Publications with Medical Students:
MSTP student: Dan Motola, summer 2001.
Medical Student: Jerry Giles, summer 2002. Jerry's poster tied for second place for medical student research in 2002, the results of which was recently published:
Cui, Y., Huang, L., Elefteriou, F., Yang, G., Shelton, J.M., Giles, J.E., Oz, O.K., Pourbahrami, T., Lu, C.Y.H., Richardson, J.A., Karsenty, G., and Li, C. (2004). Essential role of STAT3 in body weight and glucose homeostasis. Mol. Cell. Biol., 24(1), 258-269.

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