Research Projects

Obesity, a metabolic disorder linked to various diseases, has significantly increased in recent years, particularly in India. It involves adipose tissue growth, including hypertrophy and hyperplasia of fat cells. Hypertrophic obesity is related to obesity-associated disorders. A critical step in adipocyte hypertrophy is cytoskeleton remodelling, which increases lipid storage capability and prevents lipid overload. Cytoskeletal components actin, tubulin, and vimentin undergo important changes during adipogenesis and adipocyte hypertrophy. Actin cooperates with microtubules during various stages of adipocyte hypertrophy, including lipid droplet growth and transportation. However, the exact mechanism behind this combinatory contribution to fat cell expansion remains unknown. septins, GTP-binding proteins, can interact with both actin and microtubules and assemble into higher order cytoskeletal structures. septin 11, a member of the septin family, was upregulated in adipocytes during obesity and correlated with insulin resistance in subcutaneous adipose tissue. septins are crucial for lipid droplet biogenesis from the endoplasmic reticulum but are the least studied cytoskeletal type in eukaryotic cells. The hypothesis is that septins mediates the crosstalk between lipid droplet and cytoskeletal reorganisation, regulating structural rearrangements of the actin-microtubule cytoskeletal system in accordance with lipid droplet expansion. The primary objective is to evaluate whether septins, specifically septin11, is implicated in the link between lipid droplet enlargement and cytoskeletal reorganisation during adipocyte hypertrophy.