Metabolic Cybernetics or Metabocybernetics is a quantitative description of how biological systems achieve metabolic homeostasis in the face of environmental insults. In ancient times the greatest threats to metabolic homeostasis were starvation and infectious diseases whereas in modern times excess nutrition and physical inactivity pose greater threats to humanity. These latter threats are the major cause of a panoply of metabolic diseases that drive our interests. Genetic diversity creates enormous opportunities to understand complex systems like metabolism and metabolic disease enabling inference about causality rather than reflex adaptive changes.

The focus of our team is to devise quantitative strategies to understand how cells or organisms respond acutely to stresses such as meals or exercise and how such changes are modulated by environmental versus genetic diversity. This has taken us deep into many of the molecular layers that underpin biological systems such as mRNA, protein and metabolites using quantitative large-scale omics approaches. One approach that has been particularly insightful has been analysis of protein phosphorylation as this can now be quantified at a proteome wide level and there are numerous changes in the phosphoproteome within seconds of environmental change. 

More details about our research and projects can be found here. Metabocybernetics.au comprises several different subgroups each headed by emerging leaders with a research focus that reflects the larger research interest of our overall team. There is tremendous crossover between the different subgroups and this contributes to the richness of our approach.