Douglas L. Coleman
Douglas Leonard Coleman ( born October 6, 1931 in Stratford, Ontario ) is a Canadian biochemist and former researcher at the Jackson Laboratory. His works are fundamental to the study of obesity and diabetes mellitus.
Life
Coleman earned in 1954 at McMaster University in Hamilton a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1956 at the University of Wisconsin -Madison and a master's in 1958 a Ph.D. just there.
His scientific career - until his retirement in 1991 - spent Coleman at Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory (now Jackson Laboratory) in Bar Harbor, Maine. He began as a research assistant and went through numerous stages of their careers to the head of a research group and (transitional ) director.
Since his retirement devoted Coleman environmental issues such as small -scale forest management or conservation.
Work
Coleman discovered in mice two mutations: the variant obese, a hormone (now known as leptin ) do not produce and is prone to obesity - even with reduced food intake; the variant has diabetes the hormone, although in abundance, but it can not utilize the hypothalamus and therefore tends also to obesity. With the parabiosis experiments - the interconnection of parts of the circuit two each homozygous for a gene defect test animals - Coleman could develop theories to the effect of the postulated hormone. Coleman also suggested that the prevalence of obesity and diabetes mellitus among people today is the result of an evolutionary advantage of heterozygous individuals in times of starvation. Numerous considerations Colemans were later confirmed by Jeffrey M. Friedman.