Stefan Taubert

Food contains positive and negative properties. Dr. Taubert studies how our body manages unwanted contaminations (toxins), and wanted dietary components such as lipids. Lipids are essential for energy maintenance, cellular structure, and other biological processes in our body. But lipids can also be problematic, as can be seen in the unwanted fatty padding around many of our waist lines.

"Inappropriate lipid regulation is a big problem in Western societies," says Dr. Taubert.

Disturbances in lipid biology regulation can lead to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Together, these health problems affect over half of the Canadian population and millions of people around the world.

The Taubert laboratory explores nutritional biology relating to childhood obesity and childhood diabetes by studying a transparent worm, Caenorhabditis elegans. These 2 mm long worms metabolise lipids and eliminate dangerous toxins using biological mechanisms that are similar to human processes. Thus, scientists can study metabolic processes that occur in humans in an organism that is much easier to work with. This allows for faster and more efficient research that relates directly to human health even though the science starts in a worm.

"The biology of these worms is fascinating, but I’m primarily interested in using them to understand the molecular mechanisms of human disease," explains Dr. Taubert.

MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS & PUBLICATIONS

Canada Research Chairs/Canada Research Chair, Tier 2 - 2009

Ellison Medical Foundation/AFAR Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship – 2007

American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship – 2005

Taubert S, Hansen M, Van Gilst MR, Cooper SB, Yamamoto KR. The Mediator subunit MDT-15 confers metabolic adaptation to ingested material. PLoS Genetics. 2008 Feb 29; 4(2):e1000021.

Taubert S, Van Gilst MR, Hansen M, Yamamoto KR. A Mediator subunit, MDT-15, integrates regulation of fatty acid metabolism by NHR-49-dependent and -independent pathways in C. elegans. Genes & Development. 2006 May 1; 20(9):1137-49.