Endocrine Abstracts

This year marks 25 years since the calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR) was first identified in bovine parathyroid and the receptor has since emerged as a fundamental contributor to extracellular calcium (Ca2+e) homeostasis, by regulating parathyroid hormone release and urinary calcium excretion. The CaSR is a class C GPCR that is functionally active as a homodimer. It couples to multiple G-protein subtypes to activate intracellular calcium mobilisation and mi...

Pituitary hormones have long been thought solely to regulate single targets. Challenging this paradigm, we found that both anterior and posterior pituitary hormones, including FSH, had other functions in physiology. We have shown that FSH regulates skeletal integrity, and, more recently, find that FSH inhibition reduces body fat and induces thermogenic adipose tissue in wild type mice, phenocopying genetic haploinsufficiency for the FSH receptor. A polyclonal antibody raised a...

My group investigates the basic mechanisms of G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) signalling and their alterations in endocrine disease, which we study using innovative microscopy methods such as fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) and single-molecule microscopy. Using these methods, we have demonstrated that GPCRs do not only signal via cyclic AMP at the cell surface but also at intracellular sites (Calebiro et al., PLoS Biology 2009). We have shown that this is requi...