Associate Professor Matt Piper leads the Nutritional Physiology and Ageing Research Group at Monash University. The Piper laboratory focuses on the role of dietary protein in shaping appetite, continuing health and length of life. A major focus of this work is on dietary restriction (DR or calorie restriction), which is an evolutionarily conserved intervention that extends healthy lifespan. The Piper lab is interested in how the relative proportion of protein in an organism’s diet modifies this effect. The group uses the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to investigate the molecular mechanisms that mediate these effects, with the goal of understanding of the role of nutrient balance in adult health, appetite and longevity.