Project Summary: The overall goal of this new center is to facilitate the growth of young intellectual talent and build the scientific infrastructure that will promote biomedical research discoveries that will enhance our understanding of the metabolic aspects of different diseases. Specifically, we have identified four junior faculty with research interests in different, but complementary aspects of disease research. Each Research Project focuses on the metabolic aspect of a disease (anxiety/food intake, diabetes, cancer, and preeclampsia). Despite the diversity in tissues and diseases of interest, each project strongly fits into Pennington Biomedical’s general mission, to discover the triggers of chronic diseases through innovative research that improves human health across the lifespan. Within this Metabolic Basis of Disease (MBD) COBRE proposal, we are developing two new scientific cores. The first is a Preclinical Research Core, which brings together strengths of our current Comparative Biology Core, Animal Models and Behavior Core, and Transgenics Mouse Core. The second new core is a Molecular Mechanisms core that will integrate aspects of our Genomic Cores and Cell Biology Bioimaging Core to provide mentoring and technical support for the Research Project PIs and PBRC faculty.

Project Narrative: The overall goal of this new Metabolic Basis of Disease center is to facilitate the growth of young intellectual talent, foster collaborations, and build the scientific infrastructure that will promote biomedical research discoveries that will enhance our understanding of the metabolic aspects of various disease states.