Research Overview

Welcome to Nutrigenomics and Growth Biology Laboratory

We explore the epigenetic mechanisms linking maternal nutrients/metabolites to embryonic and fetal development, specifically epigenetic regulation of stem (progenitor) cell lineage commitments and differentiation into myocytes and adipocytes.

Our studies have applications to both animal agriculture and human health:

For animal agriculture, we are studying the impact of early nutrition on the growth and development of skeletal muscle and adipose tissue, which impacts animal production efficiency and meat quality.

For human health, we are exploring the epigenetic changes in progenitor cells during embryonic and fetal development as affected by maternal obesity and exercise.

For our studies, we use bioinformatic analysis, computational modeling, in vitro cell culture, transgenic animals and livestock. A wide range of laboratory techniques are used in our studies, including single-cell multi “omics” analysis, immunoblotting, ELISA, immunohistochemical staining, proteomic analyses, real-time PCR, DNA manipulation, RNA interference and epigenetic analyses, pyrosequencing and metadata analysis, as well as traditional biochemical and enzyme activity assays.