A number of different departments at UCSF came together to woo Dr. Kaveh Ashrafi to San Francisco from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.  After interviewing around the country, Dr. Ashrafi chose to join the UCSF faculty because of the collaborative opportunities available in multiple departments, including the Diabetes Center.

Kaveh Ashrafi, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Physiology at UCSF.  In his relatively short career in medical research, Dr. Ashrafi has become a recognized expert in the area of fat regulation -- an important factor in obesity and type 2 diabetes.  Dr. Ashrafi is a trained geneticist and molecular biologist.  At Harvard, he identified a number of genes involved in fat metabolism -- utilizing a tiny microscopic worm.  By partnering with members of the Diabetes Center including Dr. Christian Vaisse, a diabetes and obesity geneticist, Dr. Ashrafi is hopeful that he can move his work from worms to humans more quickly -- and impact the lives of those challenged by obesity and type 2 diabetes.

To fully understand Dr. Ashrafi's work, some basic physiology is in order.  In humans, a delicate balance between the nervous system and the rest of the body regulates food intake, energy expenditure, and fat storage.  An imbalance between any of these complex components may cause diseases such as obesity, artherosclerosis, and diabetes.  Therefore, it is critical that we understand the genetic and neuronal networks that regulate fat content.  However, this is not an easy task to accomplish in humans.

Fortunately, availability of superb genetic and molecular analysis techniques in worms make this microscopic animal an ideal organism for identifying and studying genes.  Surprisingly, there is an amazing correlation between the worm genome and the human genome, even though the human genome has approximately twice the genes as the worm.  Because the worm reproduces easily, can be viewed by the thousands, and its fat droplets can be easily illuminated by florescent dyes in its transparent body, Dr. Ashrafi can analyze vast numbers of genes.  The resulting data is then utilized by Dr. Vaisse and others working on fat regulation in humans.

By combining new technology that has been developed in the last few years called RNA mediated interference (RNAi) with the known sequence of the worm genome, Dr. Ashrafi's collaborators in the United Kingdom developed reagents to systematically analyze the worm genome.  By testing thousands of worm genes, Dr. Ashrafi has been able to identify over 500 genes that, when inactivated, affect body fat content in worms.  These fat regulatory genes can be broadly classified as those that impact food intake or energy expenditure.  Studies in Dr. Ashrafi's lab aim to elucidate the molecular functions of these genes.  This information is of enormous help to Dr. Vaisse and others in the Diabetes Center.

Even though Dr. Ashrafi has been with us for only a short time, his research is already making a difference in our efforts to understand and treat both obesity and type 2 diabetes.  Welcome, Dr. Ashrafi, to the UCSF Family!