Dr. Ye is Professor and Abide-Vividion Chair of Chemical Biology in the Department of Neuroscience & Molecular Medicine.
The brain plays a pivotal role in integrating homeostatic signals and regulating whole-body metabolism. But the high energy demand of neurons also makes the CNS highly sensitive to systemic metabolic stress. We are interested in how the brain adapts to both acute and chronic metabolic changes and how such adaptation, in turn, affects the control of organismal physiology by the CNS, at the biochemical, cellular, and circuit levels. Our long-term goal is to harness the molecular and circuit mechanisms underlying these adaptations to target metabolic disorders including obesity and type 2 diabetes as well as certain neurodegenerative diseases.