Brother Joseph N. Streiff, S.M. 1918-1985

News release announces Brother Joseph M. Streiff, S.M., died at age 67 after suffering from leukemia

Lipolysis drives expression of the constitutively active receptor GPR3 to induce adipose thermogenesis

Thermogenic adipocytes possess a therapeutically appealing, energy-expending capacity, which is canonically cold-induced by ligand-dependent activation of β-adrenergic G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Here, we uncover an alternate paradigm of GPCR-mediated adipose thermogenesis through the constitutively active receptor, GPR3. We show that the N terminus of GPR3 confers intrinsic signaling activity, resulting in continuous Gs-coupling and cAMP production without an exogenous ligand. Thus, transcriptional induction of Gpr3 represents the regulatory parallel to ligand-binding of conventional GPCRs. Consequently, increasing Gpr3 expression in thermogenic adipocytes is alone sufficient to drive energy expenditure and counteract metabolic disease in mice. Gpr3 transcription is cold-stimulated by a lipolytic signal, and dietary fat potentiates GPR3-dependent thermogenesis to amplify the response to caloric excess. Moreover, we find GPR3 to be an essential, adrenergic-independent regulator of human brown adipocytes. Taken together, our findings reveal a noncanonical mechanism of GPCR control and thermogenic activation through the lipolysis-induced expression of constitutively active GPR3.ISSN:0092-8674ISSN:1097-417

Optimization of Uniplanar Multilayer Structures using Nonlinear Tunable Dielectrics

For an optimization of the tunability of coplanar waveguides (CPW) different geometries have been studied on Barium-Strontium-Titanate (BST) thick films. The presented measurement results show a strong dependency of tunability vs. geometry which can not be calculated using standard conformal mapping (CM) approaches. To calculate a cross section of a CPW, a FDTD (finite difference time domain) algorithm expanded to field strength dependent relative permittivities has been implemented. A geometry efficiency factor ? is introduced to review the effective tunability for different geometries