Sugar of life
Creators: name: Anbalagan, Savani
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025
Subjects: sugar sensing
sugar receptor
swodkocrine
swodkoreceptor
diabetes

description:  

Adam Mickiewicz University scientist proposes new terms in biology that may unite researchers from cellular defense mechanisms to diseases such as diabetes. With fresh perspective on the evolution of receptors and using a supermarket employee analogy, he challenges researchers in the human glucose-sensing field.




Expanding on his recent ideas that challenged the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine and the origin of gas sensing during the evolution of life, a researcher at Adam Mickiewicz University's from the Faculty of Biology is now introducing two new novel terms in biology. These terms holds promise to improve our understanding and the treatment of human diseases, such as diabetes, and defense mechanisms in various organisms.

During the evolution of life, cells began to use nucleic acids such as RNA and DNA to pass on genetic information to their descendants. But these nucleic acids contain modified sugars as a backbone.  Therefore, during the evolution of life, cells must have also needed the ability to sense all the sugars inside them. The ideas presented in the new study, proposed by Dr. Savani Anbalagan at the Institute of Molecular Biology & Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, challenge the glucose-sensing research community to rethink some of their fundamental experimental findings. His proposal has been published in one of the journals of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

Our planet Earth is a system in which organisms interact across physical and time scales. Microorganisms, insects, plants and animals interact not only through gases but also through sugars. Sugars are known to be a major source of energy. From the sweet nectar of a flower to the energy stored in our muscles, from the carbohydrates in our food to the complex structures of our cells, sugars are everywhere. Bacteria can use sugars to build protective layers, while plants use sugars to attract pollinators with sweet rewards and also to defend themselves against pathogenic microorganisms. Even some viruses use sugars on human cells to penetrate them. All organisms are connected through either the use, dependence, or production of sugars. Therefore, basic science researchers using various model organisms are interested in answering a fundamental question: How do organisms and cells sense sugars?

One of the most studied sugars is glucose, with more than half a million articles published to date. While sugar signaling is a well-established concept in biology, there's no single scientific term that universally describes how microbes, plants, animals, and ecosystems are connected by sugars. In the past, Dr. Anbalagan has proposed gasocrine signaling to describe the interconnectedness of organisms based on gases. Now he is exploring a related concept for sugars by introducing the terms swodkocrine signaling and swodkoreceptors. "It is a tribute to Poland that welcomed me and gave me an opportunity in science and also academic freedom. Słodki is a Polish word for sweet taste, and I really like Polish paczki (Polish doughnuts). It will be fun to teach students about sugar-related diseases from the perspective of swodkocrine signaling". 

When asked why he decided to focus on sugars now? "I was not interested in sugars at first, there are many researchers working on sugars because of their relevance to diseases such as diabetes or sugar-based cellular defense mechanisms. When I proposed the term gasoreceptor for gas-sensing proteins, I realized that almost all gasoreceptors have two domains or regions. One region in the protein to bind the gas via a metal cofactor and another region to signal. That was surprising to me. Because in the evolution of proteins, having two domains that can do two different things, one for sensing and one for signaling, is quite advanced on a structural level. There must be simpler proteins that can bind and sense gases and use other proteins to signal about that information. Because sugar sensing is so well studied, I tried to learn about it to see if I could better understand the evolution of gasoreceptors.” That's surprising, you're an expert on receptors and you had to read more? "When someone tells me that they know everything because they have been researching a topic for the last 50 years, I am a bit skeptical. It's virtually impossible to stay up to date with the research on any given topic. They're not an AI application connected to the Internet. It's very likely that they know the works that got enough publicity, or because they were curious about the topic, or they had the means to attend so-and-so conference, or they had access to a journal behind a paywall, but not necessarily all the works! So, yes, I had to learn about sugar sensing mechanisms because I had not worked on sugar sensing before. And there is a lot more experimental work on sugar receptors than on gasoreceptors!” 

And what did you find that you thought was worth writing a new manuscript and inventing such new terms in biology? "First of all, I found what I was looking for: simpler proteins that can sense sugars and use other proteins to signal. This means that there are very likely simpler gasoreceptors that also use other proteins to signal! But what I also found was that some researchers were focusing on how cells sense sugar, while others were focusing on how cells regulate gene expression through sugar binding. And not everyone realized that they were all working on sugar-sensing receptors! In science, such little overlooked facts have big implications".   








I was not interested in sugars.






But why does it matter to you, you got what you wanted, you could go back to your gasoreceptors with these ideas? "Diabetes is one of the major human diseases and we need to understand why some people get diabetes and we also need to find better drugs. We know that 90% of drugs fail in clinical trials. There could be several reasons for this 90% failure rate. But anything, including theoretical ideas, that can help reduce that 90% failure rate will ultimately be a great relief for patients. I also realized that when I read about sugar-sensing mechanisms, in my mind I had to exclude the major human glucose-sensing protein glucokinase as a sugar-sensing receptor, because in my opinion it is not a receptor for glucose! A supermarket employee who has to check how much candy is in the supermarket is not going to eat it or unwrap it! Same with glucokinase! It is not allowed to modify glucose if it is a receptor for glucose. I thought I had to share my ideas with the scientific community, and I am happy that the peer reviewers found my proposal worthy of publication, despite the fact that there are almost 5000+ articles on glucokinase alone!”

With the aging population and rising diabetes levels, the implications of Dr. Anbalagan's proposal of swodkoreceptors and swodkocrine signaling sounds too important to be ignored by researchers working on diabetes and sugar-related cellular mechanisms.   But will it be able to withstand the criticism of the scientific community and the experts in the field of sugar sensing who have been working on it for their entire scientific careers? Or will it be embraced by them to find better drugs for diabetes or to understand sugar-related diseases? Only time will tell. Dr Anbalagan is a recipient of 2 NCN grants and is yet to receive his habilitation degree.


Related manuscript: 

Sugar-sensing Swodkoreceptors and Swodkocrine signaling.Anbalagan S. Animal Model Exp Med. 2025. doi: 10.1002/ame2.70007