Onur Deniz
Doctoral researcher in Ville Hietakangas's nutrient-sensing group in Helsinki, and first author of the fruit-fly study that found Spalt-related to be a stress-activated brake on mTORC1-driven growth
Doctoral Researcher, Nutrient Sensing group, University of Helsinki
Onur Deniz was first author of a 2026 EMBO Journal study in fruit flies (DEN2026). When an animal runs short of nutrients it has to stop building new tissue and storing fat. mTORC1, the growth-control complex, is the main switch for that building work. The study found that a transcription factor called Spalt-related (Salr), a protein that turns genes on and off, holds mTORC1-driven growth and fat storage back in the fat body, the fly organ that does the jobs of our liver and fat tissue.
Salr is switched on by the integrated stress response, a cell-wide alarm system that reacts to stress such as missing amino acids. It works side by side with FoxO, the better-known starvation regulator, rather than taking orders from it. So the fly has at least two separate brakes on growth that respond to different signals. The work was done in flies, and whether a similar Salr brake works in mammals was not tested here.
Deniz is listed as a doctoral researcher in the Nutrient Sensing group led by Ville Hietakangas at the University of Helsinki. The group page quotes Deniz's aim as finding new physiological regulators of nutrient sensing.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | A | Spalt-related is an inhibitor of mTORC1-mediated growth activated by the integrated stress response DEN2026 First author: identified Spalt-related as a brake on mTORC1-driven growth and fat storage in the fly fat body, switched on by the integrated stress response. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Onur Deniz.
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- Ville Hietakangas Professor of gene regulation at the University of Helsinki who uses fruit flies to study how animals sense nutrients and how diet controls growth, metabolism and stem cells
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