Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Energy is an absolute requirement for life, therefore animals must manage their energy use and expenditures to maintain performance and ensure survival. While seemingly simple, maintaining energy balance is particularly challenging as energy demands and supply vary widely over an organism's lifetime. Indeed, changes in the environment, in activity, or in the life stage of an animal can affect resource availability and energy allocation, ultimately affecting animal performance. Therefore, to understand the resilience of animals as a result of metabolic stress, we need to identify the factors that allow their metabolic flexibility. While a few central metabolic regulators have been identified in mammals, their role in other species have been relatively neglected. Within that framework, the long-term goal of my research program is to explore the strategies enabling metabolic plasticity in animals. In particular, we aim to understand the mechanisms allowing animals to modulate their metabolism, and to evaluate the consequences of this flexibility. Our approach is integrative as we investigate metabolic plasticity at the level of cells, tissues and whole animal. To this aim, over the next five years, I propose to pursue complementary axes of research by capitalizing on our recent research progress with two animal models, the zebrafish (Danio rerio), and the greater wax moth (Galleria mellonella). In particular, we will continue to exploit the respective unique characteristics of these animals to better understand how they can modulate their metabolism when facing a variety of stressors. We will pursue three complementary objectives: 1-We will assess the impact of muscle overexpression of an important metabolic regulator, PGC-1alpha, on swimming performance and thermal acclimation in zebrafish. We will also test the impact of PGC-1alpha on the ability to process an insect derived, high-fat diet. 2-We will use the developmental dynamics of the greater wax moth, and assess how their fat body metabolism is regulated. We will investigate the change at the molecular and whole tissue level in order to decipher the regulatory networks associated with metabolic flexibility in these animals. 3-We will also investigate the unique ability of G. mellonella to eat and digest plastics. We will be investigating how plastic biodegradation impedes their own metabolism, and assess if several generations of plastic fed animals improve their appetite and ability to breakdown plastics. The proposed work will provide novel insights into the regulation of metabolism in animals. This research will allow us to unveil both common and unique strategies to maintain metabolic balance in a changing environment. In addition, this work will open many avenues for future research, including use of new models to investigate metabolic imbalances (e.g., obesity), and development of innovative technologies to address plastic remediation, a global environmental challenge.