Special Seminar- Peter Fabian

Abstract: Phenylalanine and tyrosine catabolism is classically a hepatic pathway, yet its evolutionary co-option into extrahepatic tissues remains largely unexplored. Using zebrafish as a tractable vertebrate model, we leverage naturally occurring and engineered disruptions of this pathway — mirroring human metabolic disorders including alkaptonuria and tyrosinemia I–III — to investigate how amino acid catabolism was recruited into skeletal biology during vertebrate evolution. By integrating genetics, cellular characterisation, and metabolic tracing, we aim to understand how local phenylalanine and tyrosine metabolism shapes skeletal cell identity, tissue homeostasis, and glucose metabolism. To place these findings in a broader evolutionary context, we are taking a comparative approach to explore the origins of these metabolic specialisations and the developmental mechanisms underlying their diversification across vertebrates.

Bio: Dr Peter Fabian obtained his PhD in Developmental Biology from Charles University in Prague and completed his postdoctoral training in Gage Crump's laboratory at the University of Southern California (USC). He is now an independent group leader at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. His lab investigates how metabolism regulates skeletal development, stem-cell niches, and tissue homeostasis, using zebrafish as a model system. His research also explores the evolutionary and developmental mechanisms underlying the formation of specialised tissues across fish species and beyond

Organised by Alek Erickson