PD Dr. Reinhard Christoph Dechant

Mechanisms of nutrient sensing  

Nutrient availability is a major determinant for cell growth and regulates highly conserved signaling pathways to adjust cellular physiology to environmental conditions. Although metabolic function is widely appreciated to impact health and disease and multiple regulators of nutrient sensitive signaling pathways have been identified, little is known about the molecular mechanisms of nutrient sensing.

I am using budding yeast and mammalian cell culture to identify conserved molecular principles underlying nutrient sensing as well as long term adaptation to nutrient starvation with a special emphasis on understanding the regulation of TORC1 and Ras/PKA signaling. Surprisingly, these studies identified cytosolic pH as a critical cellular signal mediating the regulation of cell growth by promoting both TORC1 and Ras activity. As studying nutrient sensing requires the ability to follow the dynamics of cellular signaling pathways with tight control of environmental conditions and high temporal resolution, a major focus is the establishment and use of live cell assays and the development of computational tools that allow to follow short term signaling dynamics using quantitative microscopy.

As increased cytosolic pH has been associated with cellular transformation and is considered as one of the hallmarks of cancer cells, further studies directed to understand how cytosolic pH regulates cellular signaling should not only lead to a better understanding of cellular physiology in normal and cancer cells, but might also open new possibilities for therapeutic interventions with the disease.

A complete list of publications can be found external page here.

(link: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4094-4773)