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mTOR tells the brain that the body is hungry

Nature Medicine volume 12, pages 615–617 (2006)Cite this article

The multitasking signaling protein mTOR integrates nutritional and hormonal cues in the brain, modulating feeding and body weight.

Understanding the systems that govern feeding is a high priority in light of the widespread obesity epidemic. Matching food intake with energy needs to avoid obesity or starvation requires that neurons in the brain monitor levels of stored fuels and circulating nutrients. Recent data have defined circuits in the brain that control feeding, including specialized neurons in the hypothalamus that sense circulating nutrients and hormone levels1. How these neurons detect, process and respond to hormonal inputs (such as the fat-derived hormone leptin) and nutritional inputs (such as glucose, fatty acids and amino acids) is incompletely understood.

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Figure 1: Converting metabolic signals into anorectic (appetite-suppressing) responses in the hypothalamus.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Endocrinology, Department of Medicine, Diabetes and Metabolism, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, 02215, Massachusetts, USA

    Barbara B Kahn

  2. Departments of Medicine and Molecular and Integrative Physiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 48109, Michigan, USA

    Martin G Myers Jr.

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  1. Barbara B Kahn
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  2. Martin G Myers Jr.
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Kahn, B., Myers, M. mTOR tells the brain that the body is hungry. Nat Med 12, 615–617 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0606-615

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