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Apr. 11, 2013

Decoy insulin receptor controls Drosophila body size

Schematic diagrams showing the effects of receptor The effects of SDR on body size.

Insulin and insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) are known to play important roles in growth and metabolism, but how these secreted molecules are regulated in the circulating blood has remained a puzzle.

Naoki Okamoto and colleagues from Dr Nishimura's lab at the Center for Developmental Biology have fitted a major new piece into this jigsaw, showing how a secreted decoy insulin receptor acts as a negative regulator of insulin/IGF signaling in Drosophila, thus controlling growth.

The team describe how they identified and characterized this decoy insulin receptor that they called SDR in Drosophila, in an article published in Genes & Development.

More details about the study are also available in an article published on the CDB website.

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