DiAngelo, Justin

Dr. Justin DiAngelo serves as an associate professor and the program chair of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology program at Penn State Berks. Dr. DiAngelo teaches lecture and laboratory courses in biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, genetics, and immunology.

In Dr. DiAngelo's research lab, his work focuses on the genes and pathways that different tissues use to control energy homeostasis. To address this problem, Dr. DiAngelo and his students use a combination of cellular, molecular, biochemical and genetic approaches in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Fruit flies have a simple nervous system and store triglycerides and glycogen in a liver and adipose-like organ known as the fat body using mechanisms highly conserved from flies to humans, providing a simple and ideal system to study the molecular control of energy metabolism. The long-term goal of his research program is to work side by side with students to enhance their understanding of the mechanisms controlling feeding and metabolism in response to nutrient abundance.