Prof. Bin Liang, Principle Investigator, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. We are interested in understanding the regulations of fat storage and distributions, and the roles of lipids play in obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic diseases by using genetic, biochemical, genomic and lipidomic methods.

　　Email: liangb@mail.kiz.ac.cn

　　Research Achievements in 2013

　　Our long-term goal is to understand the regulations of fat storage and distributions. In 2013, we made achievements in below areas:

　　1. The tree shrew model of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)

　　High energy diets induced NAFLD in tree shrews displays symptoms from simple steatosis to steatohepatitis and fibrosis, which are helpful in revealing novel pathogenetic mechanisms of NAFLD.  

　　2. Fat storage in C. elegans

　　1) Comparative genomics and functional studies of lipid metabolic genes in C. elegans.

　　We built a database containing 471 lipid genes from the C. elegans genome and then assigned most of the lipid genes into 16 different lipid metabolic pathways integrating into a network. Moreover, we found 6 new genes affecting fat storage. 

　　2) Pu-erh tea inhibits food uptake and the biosynthesis of fat to reduce fat storage in C. elegans.

　　Our current work demonstrated that Pu-erh tea inhibits food uptake and digestion, and down-regulates the biosynthesis of fat via SREBP and SCD to reduce fat storage.

　　Research Team：

　　Laboratory Staff：

　　Dr. Xiao-Yun Wu, Research Associate, wuxiaoyun79@163.com

　　Dr. Yu-Ru Zhang, Research Associate, zyuru_2004@163.com

　　Ms. Qing Chang, Secretary, changqing0102125@163.com

　　Mr. Yun-Hai Li, Research Assistant, vet308@yahoo.cn

　　Graduate Students：

　　Cang-Sang Xie；Hai-Zhen Wang；Jing-Jing Zhang；Zhi-Guo Zhang；Yi-Hong Ding；Lin-Qiang Zhang；Sha-Sha Liao, Xue Jiang；Jie-Yu Wu；Zhi-Qing Diao；Wei Zhang