Featured Research: Yang Kuang

A $1.6 million grant from NSF/NIH, Towards an integrative mechanistic theory of within-host disease dynamics, aims to study how certain nutrients affect the development of disease in humans and animals. The PIs are Yang Kuang (director), Jim Elser (SoLS), Tim Newman (Physics), John Nagy (Scottsdale CC), Marilyn Smith (Medical Center at U. of Kansas) and Val Smith (EEB at U. of Kansas).

Just recently, observations that vitamin D supplements are effective against breast cancer and that iron nutrition affects HIV progression have grabbed newspaper headlines. Researchers are increasingly aware of many subtle impacts of certain chemicals on some diseases. For example, older Americans may remember when conventional wisdom told them to take iron supplements to combat iron deficiency. However, recent research suggests that too much iron in the diet might actualy supply a key nutrient that is required for the development of that disease. The study of such subtle impacts is a natural extension of the newly emerged subject called biological stoichiometry.

Biological stoichiometry has proven to be an important new lens through which to view and understand biological interactions. Within this general theory, the cycling and utilization of energy and multiple nutrients by organisms and their constituent cells occupies a central position. With its emphasis on the flow of elemental matter, such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, stoichiometric theory covers multiple biological scales and allows, via rigid physical and chemical constraints, the construction of robust mechanistic and predictive models. Originally formulated and verified in the fields of limnology and plant ecology, biological stoichiometry has recently been applied at physiological scales to such diverse areas as organism development and tumor growth. In this proposal we aim to synthesize and apply theoretical and empirical approaches to biological stoichiometry within the grand framework of internal disease. It is compellingly clear to us that the time is ripe for such a broad-based and interdisciplinary research program.

A major strength of the proposed work is the tightly woven threads of theoretical and experimental research. Our primary aim is the construction of predictive and verifiable theoretical models which can uncover the effects of stoichiometric interactions in within-host disease dynamics. Such theories will be built in a modular fashion, starting with simple deterministic models, and then progressively adding stochasticity, spatial heterogeneity, and genetics.

The ultimate goal of this research is to uncover, via the theory of biological stoichiometry, new ways to understand and ultimately control human disease. The successful outcome of this project will be robust and experimentally calibrated mathematical theories of disease-host interactions that can then be applied to a wide variety of human diseases such as cancer, HIV, diabetes, and newly emerging infectious diseases.