Libin Liu, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
White adipose tissue (WAT) is a highly dynamic organ and can respond rapidly to alterations in nutrient excess and deprivation, thereby fulfilling its major role in whole body energy homeostasis. Dysfunctional WAT leads to the etiology of a large number of metabolic disorders including type II diabetes and other metabolic syndrome. As the major cell type in WAT, a healthy, highly metabolic responsible adipocyte itself is essential in maintaining adipose tissue functions. However, it has been known that the functions of adipocyte start to fail under many pathophysiological conditions, such as obesity, metabolic stress, aging, lipodystrophy and others. The long term goal of my research is to understand what are the key factors and mechanisms that control adipocyte cellular functional set limit, beyond which WAT fails to function properly? To identify and characterize novel regulators, high throughput gene expression profiling, protein interaction mapping by proteomic mass spectrometry, CRISPR/RNAi screening and other systems-based approaches will be employed. My goal is to integrate the data obtained from these approaches and apply them back to in vivo mouse models. Studies for the molecular components and details of these regulatory machineries will help us to understand the mechanisms and factors that control adipocyte functional homeostasis, and furthermore to develop the potential biomarkers and drug targets for diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy to improve adipocyte quality and treat human obesity related metabolic diseases.