Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas are one step closer to understanding how high carbohydrate diets lead to obesity and diabetes. Dr. Kosaku Uyeda, professor of biochemistry, has shown that a single protein called carbohydrate response element binding protein (ChREBP), discovered by his research group, activates several genes that cause cells in the liver to turn sugar into fat. Their work appears in two studies in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The first study, published in an earlier issue, is available online, and the second, also online, will appear in an upcoming issue of PNAS.
