Johan Auwerx (born 1958 in

Diepenbeek Diepenbeek (; li, Diepenbik) is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Limburg near Hasselt. On January 1, 2012, Diepenbeek had a total population of 18,337. Its total area is 41.19 km² (15.9 sq mi) which gives a population dens ...

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

) is a Belgian biologist, and a professor at the

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

(EPFL). His research in the fields of

cellular metabolism Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run c ...

has contributed to a better understanding of the regulation of mitochondrial function by

signaling pathways Signal transduction is the process by which a chemical or physical signal is transmitted through a cell as a series of molecular events, most commonly protein phosphorylation catalyzed by protein kinases, which ultimately results in a cellula ...

Career

Johan Auwerx studied medicine at the Université catholique de Louvain and received his doctoral degree in 1982. He then worked as a

post-doctoral A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

researcher at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, and was appointed professor at the

Louis Pasteur University Louis Pasteur University (''Université Louis-Pasteur''), also known as Strasbourg I or ULP was a large university in Strasbourg, Alsace, France. As of 15 January 2007, there were 18,847 students enrolled at the university, including around 3 ...

in Strasbourg, and at the

École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

in 2008. He leads the Laboratory of Integrative Systems Physiology (LISP) and occupies the

Nestlé Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since ...

chair on energy metabolism. Johan Auwerx's lab studies how factors such as

diet Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

, physical exercise or hormones regulate

metabolism Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run c ...

by altering gene expression through modulating the activity of

transcription factors In molecular biology, a transcription factor (TF) (or sequence-specific DNA-binding factor) is a protein that controls the rate of transcription of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA, by binding to a specific DNA sequence. The fun ...

and co-factors.

Distinctions

Johan Auwerx was elected as an

EMBO Embo ( gd, Eurabol, IPA: �iaɾəpɔɫ̪ is a village in the Highland Council Area in Scotland and the former postal county of Sutherland, about north-northeast of Dornoch. On 16 July 1988, Embo declared itself independent from the rest of the ...

member in 2003. In 2016, he was awarded the

Marcel Benoist Prize The Marcel Benoist Prize, offered by the Marcel Benoist Foundation, is a monetary prize that has been offered annually since 1920 to a scientist of Swiss nationality or residency who has made the most useful scientific discovery. Emphasis is p ...

for his work on mitochondria and their role in

, and more specifically on how

nutrients A nutrient is a substance used by an organism to survive, grow, and reproduce. The requirement for dietary nutrient intake applies to animals, plants, fungi, and protists. Nutrients can be incorporated into cells for metabolic purposes or excre ...

can influence cellular behavior, thereby initiating fat cell breakdown or preventing

metabolic disorders A metabolic disorder is a disorder that negatively alters the body's processing and distribution of macronutrients, such as proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. Metabolic disorders can happen when abnormal chemical reactions in the body alter the ...

. Johan Auwerx was awarded several other prizes, such as the

Danone Danone S.A. () is a French multinational food-products corporation based in Paris. It was founded in Barcelona, Spain. It is listed on Euronext Paris where it is a component of the CAC 40 stock market index. Some of the company's products are ...

International prize for nutrition (2008), the Oskar Minkowski Prize (1998) and the Morgagni Gold Medal. He is on the editorial board of journals such as ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

'', ''

Cell Metabolism Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run cell ...

'', ''

The EMBO Journal ''The EMBO Journal'' is a semi-monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal focusing on full-length papers describing original research of general interest in molecular biology and related areas. The editor-in-chief is Facundo D. Batista (Harvard Medic ...

'' and ''

The Journal of Cell Biology The ''Journal of Cell Biology'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Rockefeller University Press. History In the early 1950s, a small group of biologists began to explore intracellular anatomy using the emerging technology of ele ...

''. As of 2020, his publications have been cited more than 100,000 times and his

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as ...

is 166. He is therefore a highly cited researcher, according to the

Institute for Scientific Information The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield in Philadelphia in 1956. ISI offered scientometric and bibliographic database services. Its specialty was citation indexing and analysi ...

References

Belgian biologists 1958 births Living people {{Belgium-scientist-stub