Xiaoyong Yang
Yale University, CT·Physiology
Body weight tends to settle around a stable level, as if the brain defends a setpoint. A small region deep in the brain, the ventromedial hypothalamus, is a key part of that system: it monitors nutrients and hormones circulating in the blood and sends instructions back out to the body to keep energy balance and blood sugar in range.
- Fields
Physiology
Neuroscience
Biochemistry
- Topics
O-GlcNAc
ventromedial hypothalamus
body weight setpoint
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Determine whether O-GlcNAc signaling in ventromedial hypothalamus neurons sets the body weight setpoint, using mice with increased or deleted O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) and comprehensive physiological measurements of weight and glucose.
- Map the neurocircuitry by which OGT-expressing hypothalamic neurons relay fat-mobilizing signals to white adipose tissue, using neural tracing, optogenetic stimulation and measurements of sympathetic innervation.
- Identify how O-GlcNAc modification, a glucose-derived sugar tag on proteins, regulates how hypothalamic neurons sense circulating hormones and nutrients, using electrophysiological recordings and molecular profiling.
- Test whether hypothalamic OGT controls adipose tissue lipolysis, the release of stored fat, and thereby constrains body weight gain in mouse gain- and loss-of-function models.
More about the research
This project asks how neurons there read nutritional signals at the molecular level, and how they use that information to tell fat tissue when to release stored fat.
Why it matters
Obesity and its complications remain difficult to treat, and drugs acting on the brain's metabolic control circuits are an appealing route. By linking a nutrient-sensing chemical modification in a specific hypothalamic region to fat breakdown and body weight, this work could reveal targets for obesity therapies designed to work through the brain's own weight-regulating circuitry with fewer side effects.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Linda C Hsieh-Wilson
California Institute of Technology, CA·Chemistry
Map glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) in the hypothalamus and disrupt them in animal models to test effects on food intake, body weight and blood sugar control.
Han Tan
University of California-Irvine, CA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Test whether BNC2 neurons, leptin-sensing cells in the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus, control the function of glucose-regulating organs through direct nerve connections.
Makoto Ishii
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Neuroscience
Test whether amyloid-beta disrupts intracellular calcium balance in leptin-responsive NPY/AgRP neurons, hunger-promoting hypothalamic cells, as an early event in Alzheimer's disease, using genetic mouse models.
The school
Yale University: 73 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.
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