mjlow@umich.edu
Professor, Molecular & Integrative Physiology
Professor, Internal Medicine
Dr. Low is Professor of the Departments of Molecular & Integrative Physiology and Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. He is also an Investigator of the Brehm Center for Diabetes Research. Research in his lab is focused on determining how the hypothalamus integrates environmental and interoceptive sensory information to maintain neuroendocrine homeostasis and energy balance. He is an internationally recognized expert in the generation and analysis of mutant mouse models and currently uses a combination of molecular genetic, endocrine, and behavioral approaches to characterize the physiological functions of neuropeptides and G-protein coupled receptors that are highly expressed in hypothalamic neural circuits, particularly proopiomelanocortin (POMC), MC4-receptor, enkephalin, dynorphin, mu-opioid receptor, corticotropin releasing hormone, somatostatin, dopamine, and dopamine D2-like receptors. POMC neurons play a critical role in the regulation of appetite and metabolism and dysfunction in their associated neural circuits can produce morbid obesity. A current major project in the Low lab is to dissect the functional significance of the recently discovered neuronal enhancers in POMC using targeted deletions of individual or multiple enhancer sequences in mutant mice.