Doctoral Dissertation Research: Investigation of the Evolution of Human Adipocytes

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

Humans differ from other living primates in terms of diet, metabolic traits, and disease susceptibilities, yet little is known about how these differences arose or the genetic mechanisms underlying these differences. This doctoral dissertation project will use a comparative primate model to investigate how gene expression in fat cells has changed during human evolution and the role of diet in these gene expression differences. The research will contribute to our growing understanding of important relationships among human evolutionary origins, uniquely human traits, and health and disease risks in modern humans, and will be relevant to evolutionary anthropology and clinical research on nutrition and metabolism. The project will support graduate and undergraduate student training and mentoring in STEM research, as well as public science outreach activities and dissemination of novel data and techniques. Metabolic traits and diet were of particular importance during human evolution and play a role in many common human diseases and chronic conditions today. This project utilizes several state-of-the-art techniques to address evolutionary questions about the evolution of diet and metabolism in humans. The investigators will use induced pluripotent stem cells from humans and other primate species to investigate regulatory regions controlling gene expression in adipocytes. A massively parallel reporter assay will be used to determine the activity of these regulatory regions. Changes in gene expression in response to different dietary components such as omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids will also be measured.