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
Professor of Gene Regulation and group leader, MetaScale Centre of Excellence, University of Helsinki · postdoc with Stephen Cohen, EMBL Heidelberg and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, Singapore (papers 2007–2009) · doctoral work with Lea Sistonen, Turku Centre for Biotechnology, Turku (papers 2003–2005)
Ville Hietakangas was senior author of the 2026 fruit-fly study in this Atlas (DEN2026). It found that a transcription factor called Spalt-related (Salr) restrains mTORC1, the growth-control complex, when nutrients are scarce. Salr limits growth and fat storage in the fat body, the fly's equivalent of liver and fat tissue. It is switched on by the integrated stress response, a cell-wide alarm system, and works alongside FoxO rather than below it. The result adds a second, separate brake to the picture of how a starving animal stops growing. It was shown in flies only.
Hietakangas began in a very different area. Papers from 2003 to 2005 with Lea Sistonen at the Turku Centre for Biotechnology in Finland describe how heat shock factors, proteins that protect cells under stress, are controlled by chemical tags called SUMO. As a postdoc with Stephen Cohen, first at EMBL in Heidelberg and then at the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory in Singapore, Hietakangas moved to growth signalling in flies. A 2007 Genes & Development paper showed that TOR complex 2, the second mTOR complex, acts as a booster that widens the range of AKT signalling, and that it matters most when the pathway is overactive, as in tumour-like overgrowth. In 2009 Hietakangas and Cohen wrote an Annual Review of Genetics overview of how nutrition controls tissue growth.
The Hietakangas group in Helsinki studies nutrient sensing: how cells read the animal's nutritional state and turn it into changes in gene activity, including sensing of sugar and the nutrient control of intestinal stem cells. The university presents this basic research as relevant to diabetes and fatty liver. Hietakangas is Professor of Gene Regulation at the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences and the Institute of Biotechnology, and a group leader in the MetaScale Centre of Excellence.
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 Senior author: led the fly study showing that Spalt-related, switched on by the integrated stress response, restrains mTORC1-driven growth alongside FoxO. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Ville Hietakangas.
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- 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
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