The gastrointestinal tract is the tract or passageway of the digestive system that leads from the mouth to the anus. The GI tract contains all the major organs of the digestive system, in humans and other animals, including the esophagus, stomach, and intestines. Food taken in through the mouth is digested to extract nutrients and absorb energy, and the waste expelled at the anus as faeces. Gastrointestinal is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the stomach and intestines.
The enteric nervous system (ENS) or intrinsic nervous system is one of the three main divisions of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), the other being the sympathetic (SNS) and parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS), and consists of a mesh-like system of neurons that governs the function of the gastrointestinal tract. It is capable of acting independently of the SNS and PSNS, although it may be influenced by them. The ENS is nicknamed the "second brain". It is derived from neural crest cells.
Octopamine (OA), also known as para-octopamine and norsynephrine among synonyms, is an organic chemical closely related to norepinephrine, and synthesized biologically by a homologous pathway. Octopamine is often considered the major "fight-or-flight" neurohormone of invertebrates. Its name is derived from the fact that it was first identified in the salivary glands of the octopus.
Dame Kay Elizabeth Davies is a British geneticist. She is Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. She is director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) functional genetics unit, a governor of the Wellcome Trust, a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function, and a patron and Senior Member of Oxford University Scientific Society. Her research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). In the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying DMD.
Utpal Banerjee is a distinguished professor of the department of molecular, cell and developmental biology at UCLA. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University, India and obtained his Master of Science degree in physical chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. In 1984, he obtained a PhD in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology where he was also a postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Seymour Benzer from 1984-1988.
Andrea Hilary Brand is the Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Biology and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. She heads a lab investigating nervous system development at the Gurdon Institute and the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. She developed the GAL4/UAS system with Norbert Perrimon which has been described as “a fly geneticist's Swiss army knife”.
Michael Morris Rosbash is an American geneticist and chronobiologist. Rosbash is a professor and researcher at Brandeis University and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Rosbash's research group cloned the Drosophila period gene in 1984 and proposed the Transcription Translation Negative Feedback Loop for circadian clocks in 1990. In 1998, they discovered the cycle gene, clock gene, and cryptochrome photoreceptor in Drosophila through the use of forward genetics, by first identifying the phenotype of a mutant and then determining the genetics behind the mutation. Rosbash was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003. Along with Michael W. Young and Jeffrey C. Hall, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm".
The gut–brain axis is the two-way biochemical signaling that takes place between the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous system (CNS). The term "microbiota–gut–brain axis" highlights the role of gut microbiota in these biochemical signaling. Broadly defined, the gut–brain axis includes the central nervous system, neuroendocrine system, neuroimmune systems, the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, sympathetic and parasympathetic arms of the autonomic nervous system, the enteric nervous system, vagus nerve, and the gut microbiota.
Gaiti Hasan is an Indian scientist who researches in the fields of molecular biology, genetics, neuroscience and cell signalling. Hasan is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), the apex body of Indian scientists and technologists. From 2013 onwards she has been serving as a Senior Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore.
Hugo J. Bellen is a professor at Baylor College of Medicine and an investigator emeritus at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute who studies genetics and neurobiology in the model organism, Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly.
The microbiota are the sum of all symbiotic microorganisms living on or in an organism. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a model organism and known as one of the most investigated organisms worldwide. The microbiota in flies is less complex than that found in humans. It still has an influence on the fitness of the fly, and it affects different life-history characteristics such as lifespan, resistance against pathogens (immunity) and metabolic processes (digestion). Considering the comprehensive toolkit available for research in Drosophila, analysis of its microbiome could enhance our understanding of similar processes in other types of host-microbiota interactions, including those involving humans. Microbiota plays key roles in the intestinal immune and metabolic responses via their fermentation product, acetate.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Medical Sciences (LMS) is a biomedical research institute based in West London, UK. Research at the institute focuses on the understanding of the molecular and physiological basis of health and disease. The LMS was established in 1994 and receives core funding from the Medical Research Council like the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University. The institute is hosted by Imperial College London at the Hammersmith Hospital., and is part of the Institute of Clinical Sciences (ICS), a department in the Imperial College London, Faculty of Medicine. It was led by Amanda Fisher from 2008-2021. In January 2023 the leadership was taken up by new director Wiebke Arlt.
Irene Mary Carmel Tracey is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford and former Warden of Merton College, Oxford. She is also Professor of Anaesthetic Neuroscience in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences and formerly Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford. She is a co-founder of the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB), now the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging. Her team’s research is focused on the neuroscience of pain, specifically pain perception and analgesia as well as how anaesthetics produce altered states of consciousness. Her team uses multidisciplinary approaches including neuroimaging.
Nilay Yapici is a Turkish neuroscientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she is the Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences and Adelson Sesquicentennial Fellow in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. Yapici studies the neural circuits underlying decision making and feeding behavior in fruit fly models.
The Suffrage Science award is a prize for women in science, engineering and computing founded in 2011, on the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day by the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences (LMS). There are three categories of award:
- life sciences
- engineering and physical sciences
- mathematics and computing.
Holly Ann Ingraham is an American physiologist who is the Herzstein Professor of Molecular Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. She studies women's health, in particular, sex-dependent central regulation of female metabolism and physiology. She was Elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019, and the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
Ana I. Domingos is a Portuguese neuroscientist specialising in the treatment of obesity independently of food intake. Domingos is a full Professor of Neuroscience at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Domingos is also a fellow, tutor and the director of studies in medicine at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
Corinne Houart is a Belgian biomedical scientist who is Professor of Developmental Biology at King's College London. She also serves as editor of the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology. She was elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2021.
Petra Hajkova is a Professor of Developmental Epigenetics at the Imperial College London. She is also the Deputy Director of the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences, where her research group Reprogramming and Chromatin is also hosted.
Nicole Clémence Roy is a Canadian–New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at the University of Otago, specialising in nutrition and digestive health, including gastrointestinal physiology and microbiome–host interactions. She is a Fellow of Food Standards Australia New Zealand.
