Novel aspects of hepatic glucagon signalling in metabolic control

The hormone glucagon is a fundamental metabolic regulator that being considered as a therapeutic option for obesity and type 2 diabetes. However, very little is known about how glucagon exerts its multiple metabolic actions. Given that the liver is a chief site of action, a perfused rat liver model combined with mass spectrometry-based proteomics reveals a novel glucagon target protein. Hepatocyte-specific loss- and gain-of-function experiments revealed that this protein was a key regulator of glucose, lipid and amino acid metabolism. In summary, this thesis identified a novel hepatic signalling node that modulates the metabolic actions of glucagon.