The major focus of our research effort concerns the mechanisms of obesity-induced metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, which is a serious disease that affects 8.3% of the population in the United States. Currently we are using molecular biology, biochemical, and cell biology approaches as well as tissue-specific transgenic and knockout mouse models to identify and characterize key molecules involved in the regulation of glucose metabolism and energy homeostasis. Particularly we are interested in how obesity leads to adipocyte dysregulation and how adipose tissue dysfunction affects whole body energy homeostasis. It is our hope that better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the crosstalk between adipose tissues and other tissues will generate important information for the development of new therapeutic drugs for the treatment of obesity-associated disorders such as Type 2 diabetes, cancer, and aging.