Michel Lab
Endocrinology of Fish Energy Homeostasis
Institute of Zoology
University of Cologne
Welcome to our lab.
We are interested in the control of Fish Energy Homeostasis and all the processes it affects!
NEWS 2023
October 6 - Anna-Lena defends her BSc thesis. Congratulations!
October 2 - Oliver Neckel & Michelle Thomas join the lab for a Bachelor project. Welcome.
July 3 - Marceline and Randy hand in their M-Ed. thesis - Congratulations!
April 20 - Tom comes back to the lab for a period as a WHK to learn genotyping and to work on bringing his BSc to publication. Welcome back.
April 3 - Anna-Lena Behrens joins the group for her lab internship as well as Bachelors thesis! Welcome!
March 20 - Amrutha submits her PhD thesis. Congratulations!
February 18 - New study Published - Khalil et al 2023 - Our catfish collaboration with Rex Dunham - we show that our MC4R edited fish perform better in growth and feed conversion ratio
March 17 - Marceline Brera and Randy Hänel join to write an MEd masters thesis on lesson plans for high school students - can we start a cookbook with recipes to make it easier on high school teachers to run experiments in the class room?
February 16 - New study Published - Wei et al 2023 - We show that while Agrp LOF leads to a loss of pituitary gene expression (gh, fsh and lh), the animals grow normally and show normal reproductive behaviour suggesting peripheral compensatory mechanisms
January 23 - Tom defends his BSc thesis. Congratulations!
NEWS 2022
August 9 - New study Published - Coogan et al 2022 - Our catfish collaboration with Rex Dunham - we show that our MC4R edited fish perform better in growth and feed conversion ratio
May the fourth - New study Published - Leibold et al 2022 - We show that animals that have been growth restricted since 5dpf compensate through mechanisms of catch up growth and not compensatory growth and that diet indoced obese (DIO) fish primarily grow faster until they reach a plateu after which allometric measurements suggest that they increas in width not in length. At this stage we also see markers of obesity such as increased reliance on adipose hypertrophy, hepatic steatosis and hyperglycemia.
February 21 - New study Published - Bagivalu Lakshminarasimha et al 2022 - We show that zebrafish with a mutation in the Lepr have a reduction in pituitary reproductive gene expression (fsh/lh) but still reproduce normally. When we purged the oocytes we saw a decrease in maturation and/or an increase in ovarian atresia. Further we saw an effect of leptin on an in vitro germinal vesicle breakdown assay (GVBD) suggesting that there is at least a peripheral component to this effect and likely also a central component.
NEWS 2021
August 16 - New study Published - Bagivalu Lakshminarasimha et al 2021 - We show that for several of our Lepr LOF lines we have a specific, abolished hepatic induction of SOCS3 by heterologous leptin. We go on to show that these lines do not grow faster than wildtypes when kept in the same tanks as a het x het incross but when we separate growth as wt x wt or LOF x LOF incrosses and let these fish grow in separate tanks at controlled densities we find small variations in growth that at times are significant but do not depend on genotype. With this study we support our further work in our Lepr LOF lines in the abscence of obesity which is a huge benefit in looking at phenotypes other than obesity as in mice for example it is difficult to tease apart the bona fide effect of Lepr LOF from downstream effects of morbid obesity.
NEWS 2020
COVID pandemic changes life as we knew it
January 23 - Fritz defends his BSc thesis, nice work.
January 8 - Fritz hands in his Thesis. Congratulations!
NEWS 2019
August 19 - Fritz Breidenbach joins the lab for a BSc thesis
June 17 - New study Published - Shainer et al 2019 - A collaboration with Yoav Gothilf looking at AgRP2 in zebrafish, showeing that AgRP2 is secreted by RPE cells and modulates the stress axis while AgRP1 modulates feeding.
NEWS 2018
October 29 - Amrutha Bagivalu Lakshminarasimha joins the lab as graduate student interested in leptin biology.
June 5 - Editorial - Michel 2018 - The end of a fun time inviting good folk to write reviews for Frontiers! Got a good spectrum of amazing papers covering the role of leptin in non mammalian species as well as monotremes - what is the role of leptin?
January 20 - Procedure published - Elaswad et al 2018 - The first of our collaboration with Rex Dunham trying to CRISPR catfish MC4R and in this case how to CRISPR catfish to start with.