( idants helping to keep the integrity o...)Diabetes research takes wing thanks to long-lived fruit fly

Then, in another surprise, Jasper and Bohmann showed that JNK targets the same protein as the widely studied insulin receptor, central to human health and to the disease process that underlies diabetes. The finding has opened up an untapped route for possibly interfering with the disease process that underlies diabetes.

"Obesity is on the rise dramatically, and after decades of increasing life span among people in the United States, there is talk that life expectancy is actually expected to fall soon, largely due to the epidemic of obesity and diabetes," said Bohmann. "It's a huge health issue. Many people have this problem ?it's not going away anytime soon.

"This research isn't so much about making people to live to 120 as it is about preventing diseases like diabetes, heart disease, or Alzheimer's. We're trying to identify the mechanisms that cause damage to our body as we age, and prevent them. This has opened a new playing field for people in aging research."

The work was initially supported by the Nathan Shock Center, funded by the National Institute on Aging, and the Upstate Coalition of Aging Research. Now, Bohmann will use $1.4 million in a new five-year study exploring the relationship between JNK and the insulin receptor, while Jasper will use $1.1 million in a four-year study investigating just how much control JNK seems to wield over insulin production.

It's likely, for instance, that JNK counters the effects of the insulin receptor and inhibits the production of insulin, a crucial hormone that converts the food we eat into forms that the body can utilize. JNK detects stress in the environment and not only prepares the body to deal with insults from the environment, but also limits
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Source:University of Rochester Medical Center