Does a High Fat Diet Initiate an Epigenetic Program for Diabetes?
Funding agency: Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute (BIG grant) Investigators: El Osta, Febbraio, Armitage, Head, Duffy, Kingwell The “pandemic” of metabolic disease is recognized as one that is caused by an interaction between genes and the environment. This study investigates the role of epigenetic modification induced by exposure to a high fat diet (both directly and prenatally) on gene expression and metabolic control. The study incorporates cell, animal (rabbit and rat) and human studies with genome wide histone modification and gene expression analyses. Current projects include studies of offspring from rabbit and rat mothers fed high fat diets. These animals undergo extensive physiological metabolic investigations at the whole body and tissue level as well as epigenetic and gene expression analysis of metabolic tissues (muscle, adipose, liver). Results from our animal investigations will be interpreted in conjunction with parallel data from human vastus lateralis and adipose
