We are currently facing a global nutrition crisis whereby diseases such as obesity and Type 2 Diabetes are drastically increasing in prevalence. Diet plays a huge role in those diseases; however, currently there is no universal diet that provides the same benefit for everyone. My project aims to tackle the question of why we all respond to diets differently. One source of this variation is our DNA! I aim to look at how DNA, in different compartments of our cell: the nucleus and the mitochondria, communicate with each other and decide the health-outcome of a diet. I will be using fruit flies to conduct my experiments because humans share 75% of their disease-related genes with them. By understanding the interaction between the nucleus and mitochondria, we will have a better understanding of nutrition-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes and obesity. This will not only help us minimise the risk of those diseases in us but also in our children and generations to come.
