Sam Wu

Can you burn your fat away and would it help? 

Adipose tissue is far more dynamic than its reputation as “fat storage” suggests—it constantly decides whether to store excess calories or burn them off as heat through a process called non-shivering thermogenesis. This heat-producing pathway, carried out by specialized brown and beige fat cells, has the potential to influence whole-body metabolism and maybe even body weight. Our project seeks to uncover how fat cells make these metabolic decisions at the molecular level: what signals tell them to store energy, what triggers them to switch into heat-burning mode, and why this balance is disrupted in obesity and diabetes.