Team Leader
Brighton Garrett
Texas A&M
Genetics- Nutrition Department
brighton_garrett@tamu.edu
Project Type
Research
Who Can Join
Undergraduate Students
Project Description
During pregnancy, while deficiencies in essential nutrients like vitamin A (vitA) can lead to adverse maternal and fetal outcomes, excessive vitA intake can also be teratogenic. This makes precise monitoring and treatment critical. However, the most reliable measurement is by liver biopsy, an invasive method. To improve precision nutrition strategies, we aim to develop a model to predict hepatic retinoid levels from serum metabolomic profiles, a noninvasive sample, using genetically diverse outbred mice.
Simplified diversity outbred (SDO) mice, established from three wild-type founder strains (CAST/EiJ, PWK/PhJ, and WSB/EiJ), reflect the genetic diversity seen in human populations. We have observed significant differences in serum and hepatic retinoid levels among these founder strains, highlighting the impact of genetic diversity on vitA metabolism. We previously built a successful support vector regression model using liver transcriptome data to predict serum retinoid levels on inbred mice (R² = 0.87), and we will extend this approach to SDO. We are currently in the early stages of the project, generating animals and collecting tissues.
This noninvasive approach could provide a valuable tool for assessing vitA status in the liver and guiding dietary recommendations for at-risk human populations in the future.
Team Needs
Help with tissue sampling, histology and tissue processing, feeding mice, MRIing mice, and weighing mice. Also general data keeping help and statistical analysis.
Special Opportunities
All of these needs have a project that can be associated with them so students can work on their own poster and project. There is also room for an eventual individual research question.