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Introduction

Dr McGee’s roles within the School of Medicine are to coordinate the Musculoskeletal Theme of the Bachelor of Medicine Bachelor of Surgery, to conduct world class independent and collaborative research, to generate independent research funding and to supervise Higher Degree by Research students. Dr McGee obtained his PhD in Molecular Physiology from Deakin University in 2005 and completed postdoctoral training at the Department of Physiology, The University of Melbourne; and The Welcome Trust Biocentre, University of Dundee, Scotland. In 2006, Dr McGee accepted a Peter Doherty Fellowship from the NHMRC and at the beginning of 2009, relocated his research program to the School of Medicine, Deakin University, where he currently heads the Signalling and Transcription Laboratory, within the Metabolic Research Unit.


Dr McGee is coordinator of the Musculoskeletal Topic of the Knowledge of Health and Illness Theme (HME201). He also contributes to teaching in other subjects including Molecular Biology Techniques (SBB321) and Research Methods (HBS400). Dr McGee also supervisors honours and PhD students.


The prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes is rapidly increasing and the diseases are now major causes of morbidity in Western society. These diseases result in metabolic remodelling in a number of important tissues such as skeletal muscle, the liver and the brain. Much of this remodelling is due to altered expression of genes controlling metabolism. Our work focuses on the signalling and transcriptional mechanisms regulating metabolism in both healthy and diseased states. As part of this work, we have discovered a novel signalling and transcription pathway that regulates metabolism in response to low and high nutrient availability. We are currently investigating the role of this pathway in metabolic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Other ongoing projects include regulation of the insulin signalling pathway and characterisation of novel, metabolically active factors released from fat.

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