David Carling
Biochemist who heads the Cellular Stress group at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences in London and has spent decades working out how the energy sensor AMPK is switched on and what it controls
Head, Cellular Stress Group, MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences (formerly MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, later MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences), Hammersmith Hospital Campus, Imperial College London (group founded 1992)
Portrait: MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences
AMPK is the cell's fuel gauge. When energy runs low, the ratio of AMP and ADP to ATP rises, AMPK switches on, and it turns off energy-hungry processes such as mTORC1-driven growth. In 2011 a Nature paper led by Bing Xiao and Steve Gamblin, with David Carling as a co-author, showed how this works in atomic detail. AMP binding protects AMPK from losing the phosphate group that keeps it active. ADP binding at one site gives the same protection without directly switching the enzyme on, so ADP, which is more abundant than AMP, can also signal low energy. The team also solved the crystal structure of an active AMPK complex. This is a protein and cell study.
Carling heads the Cellular Stress group at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences on the Hammersmith Hospital campus of Imperial College London. The group was founded in 1992, when the institute was the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, and it studies how AMPK regulates metabolism and how this links to cancer, obesity and fatty liver disease. With the same structural biology team, Carling followed the 2011 paper with a 2013 study showing how a synthetic drug-like molecule binds and activates AMPK.
The group's recent collaborations ask what AMPK and related signals mean for whole animals. They include a 2024 Nature study in which blocking the signalling protein IL-11 extended healthy lifespan in mice, a 2025 study on AMPK in the cells that make myelin in the brain, and a 2026 study in which directly activating AMPK with a drug extended lifespan in yeast, worms and flies.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 | M | Structure of mammalian AMPK and its regulation by ADP XIA2011 Co-author of the study that solved the structure of active mammalian AMPK and showed how ADP binding protects it from inactivation. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with David Carling.
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- Steven J. Gamblin Structural biologist and Fellow of the Royal Society who solved the crystal structure of active mammalian AMPK, the cell's energy sensor and the main counterweight to mTORC1, and who now directs the scientific platforms of the Francis Crick Institute
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