Behavioral Actions of Angiotensin II: Circuits and Intracellular Signals

Project summary: candidate, environment, and research. This proposal describes a 5-year training program designed to provide the candidate with the expertise needed to achieve his long-term goal of developing a career as an independent behavioral neuroscientist at an academic research university. The candidate received a Ph.D. in 2001 and has since been conducting research as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Animal Biology and the Mahoney Institute for Neurological Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. The Mahoney Institute for Neurological Sciences houses over 180 faculty members from eighteen departments and six schools within the University of Pennsylvania and provides an ideal training environment for the candidate. The proposed mentor, Dr. Steven J. Fluharty, is a well-established researcher in the field of behavioral neuroscience and an expert in the cellular and behavioral responses to the hormone studied in the proposed experiments, the potent dipsogen angiotensin II (Angll). The research plan focuses on water, salt, and food intake, key components of body fluid, cardiovascular, and energy homeostasis. Understanding these behaviors as separate, but related forms of ingestive behavior has the potential to reveal novel insights into their control and regulation. The experiments described here are designed to determine the intracellular events associated with the hormonal stimuli for ingestive behavior. Angll receptors produce a diverse array of intracellular responses, yet the connection between any of these responses and the behaviors produced by treatment with Angll remains unclear. The experiments described here take advantage of novel pharmacological approaches to determine the behavioral relevance of these divergent intracellular responses to Angll-induced ingestive behaviors and explore commonalities of ingestive behaviors in general. Project summary: Relevance to public health. Ingestion of water, salt, and food is critical for maintenance of homeostasis. Disorders affecting body fluid, cardiovascular, and energy homeostasis include hypertension, heart or kidney disease, diabetes, and obesity. Determining the neural mechanisms through which hormones mediate these behaviors is critical for a complete understanding of the phenomena and may lead to novel therapeutic approaches to combat the relevant disease states.