Mouse Metabolism Core Director
M_Diabetes Center
Research Area
+1 415 476-2807
Research in Allison Xu’s laboratory focuses on understanding the adaptive regulation of energy balance and glucose homeostasis in response to changes of physiologic and environmental conditions. Specifically, Allison’s lab is investigating how hypothalamic and hindbrain neurons sense and integrate peripheral hormones and nutritional signals, and how these neurons regulate feeding, energy expenditure, systemic glucose and lipid metabolism. These efforts will help better understand how energy balance and glucose homeostasis are regulated and how these regulations are disrupted in obesity, type 2 diabetes and aging.
Publications
Identification of AgRP cells in the murine hindbrain that drive feeding.
Molecular metabolism
Modulation of foraging-like behaviors by cholesterol-FGF19 axis.
Cell & bioscience
ASB4 modulates central melanocortinergic neurons and calcitonin signaling to control satiety and glucose homeostasis.
Science signaling
A gene-diet interaction controlling relative intake of dietary carbohydrates and fats.
Molecular metabolism
Neuronal modulation of hepatic lipid accumulation induced by bingelike drinking.
American journal of physiology. Endocrinology and metabolism
Regulation of Hepatic Lipid Accumulation and Distribution by Agouti-Related Protein in Male Mice.
Endocrinology
Hypothalamic Sensing of Bile Acids, a Gut Feeling.
Trends in endocrinology and metabolism: TEM
Acute Lesioning and Rapid Repair of Hypothalamic Neurons outside the Blood-Brain Barrier.
Cell reports
Suppression of GHS-R in AgRP Neurons Mitigates Diet-Induced Obesity by Activating Thermogenesis.
International journal of molecular sciences
Leptin potentiates astrogenesis in the developing hypothalamus.
Molecular metabolism
Modulation of AgRP-neuronal function by SOCS3 as an initiating event in diet-induced hypothalamic leptin resistance.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Metabolic transceivers: in tune with the central melanocortin system.
Trends in endocrinology and metabolism: TEM
AgRP innervation onto POMC neurons increases with age and is accelerated with chronic high-fat feeding in male mice.
Endocrinology
De novo neurogenesis in adult hypothalamus as a compensatory mechanism to regulate energy balance.
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
Functional requirement of AgRP and NPY neurons in ovarian cycle-dependent regulation of food intake.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Specific physiological roles for signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 in leptin receptor-expressing neurons.
Molecular endocrinology (Baltimore, Md.)