The Pennington Biomedical Research Center is a modern research facility associated with Louisiana State University. Research at the Pennington Center is focused on nutrition, specifically the interrelationships between diet, health, and disease. The Center has both basic science and clinical research programs that are integrated across all its major research fields, obesity, diabetes and metabolism, lipids and cardiovascular disease, nutrition, neurobiology and behavior. The application of molecular biological approaches to the study of nutrition has been slow compared to other areas of biology, but it is now rapidly gaining momentum and providing exciting information on nutrient-genomic interactions that may be of significance to our understanding of the role of nutrition in health and the disease process. Molecular biological approaches provide an important component of all the research programs at the Pennington Center. We now plan to extend this program by building additional space for the development of our transgenic breeding colonies. This addition will allow more direct study of the effects of under and over expression of specific gene productions in order to identify their role in such nutritionally related disorders as obesity and cardiovascular disease. In addition, the transgenic technology will be utilized to provide important new insight into normal physiological control systems. This application is for support to expand rodent housing space and equip this space to accommodate research using viral vectors and related pathogens. This will include the purchase of necessary equipment and supplies as well as facility renovation. This addition to the transgenic facility will allow a number of exciting developments to funded research programs and provide a focus for the development of new collaborative research at the Center and within the Louisiana State University system.
