Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Food is fundamental to social and physical well-being. We recognize our food’s nutritional composition plays a critical role in coordinating our metabolic health, where dysfunction increases our risk for obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Lower nutrient quality in our foods and increasing use of non-nutritive additives such as sweeteners, indigestible fats, preservatives, and contaminants interact with our cells with unknown functional consequences and may be a detriment to the function of our cells. To understand how our cells sense nutrients and other food components, Jill Rourke, Canada Research Chair in Cell Signalling and Pharmacology, together with a team of students will address emergent, high-impact biological questions like: How does cellular nutrient sensing contribute to metabolic diseases like obesity, diabetes, and cancer? And, how can we exploit the power of high throughput pharmacology experimentation to improve research training and new product safety? Nutrient stress occurs when cells have too little, too much, or the wrong combination of nutrients and growth signals, and is a common feature underlying many diseases. We hypothesize that specific nutrients and non-nutritive food additives drive our overall nutrient and energy balance, in part through interaction with a large family of cell surface receptors (G Protein-Coupled Receptors, GPCRs) that detect changes in the cellular environment and convert these signals into molecular responses inside of the cell. Rourke and her team are discovering how these protein receptors on the surface of human cells detect common nutrients such as amino acids, sugars, and fats as well as molecules, such as hormones, that help to indicate if the cell is experiencing nutrient stress. The results of this research program will lead to a better understanding of how human cells sense their nutrient environment and use this information to maintain normal cellular functions. Rourke’s hope is that addressing these questions will inform the eventual development of safer food products, nutrition guidelines, and medicines for the improved health and well-being of all Canadians.