Research Expertise and Interest
metabolism, obesity, adipose tissue, brown fat, thermogenesis, tissue engineering, diabetes, fatty acid transport, fatty acid, stem cells, microphysiological systems
Research Description
Andreas Stahl is a professor in the Department of Nutritional Science & Toxicology. The overarching goal of the Stahl laboratory is to advance human health by re-engineer lipid fluxes in the context of obesity-related disorders to protect certain tissues, such as the liver, from detrimental effects of ectopic lipid deposition and to generate metabolically highly active tissues that can serve as a save destination for excess fatty acids. To this end, they are investigating molecular mechanisms governing lipid uptake, particularly for fatty acids and CoQ, hepatobiliary diseases, and adipocyte biology. Toward the latter, they have been working on novel bioengineering based approaches to expand and activate brown adipose tissue. Further, to facilitate the assessment of altered nutrient fluxes, they have been developing and testing novel bioluminescent imaging approaches to quantitatively assess macro- and micronutrients in vivo and have been working as part of a multidisciplinary team toward modeling human metabolic function and disease using iPSC based microphysiological systems, aka organs-on-a-chip, for adipocytes, hepatocytes, and islets.
In the News
Brown fat flexes its muscle to burn energy -- and calories
Smelling your food makes you fat
Engineered hot fat implants reduce weight gain in mice
Scientists at UC Berkeley have developed a novel way to engineer the growth and expansion of energy-burning “good” fat, and then found that this fat helped reduce weight gain and lower blood glucose levels in mice.
Grapefruit juice stems weight gain in mice fed a high-fat diet
Fad diets come and go, but might there be something to the ones that involve consuming grapefruit and grapefruit juice? New research found that mice fed a high-fat diet gained less weight when they drank grapefruit juice instead of water.
Fatty-liver disease discovery promises new treatments for diabetes, other problems
Two types of naturally produced substances — one of them a bear bile acid — reduce the uptake of fat by the liver, opening the door to the development of new treatments for fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes, according to a new study by researchers at UC Berkeley.