The comprehensive assessment of energy balance in experimental rodents is crucial to a wide variety of NIH- funded projects at the Penn State College of Medicine. Such studies include characterization of energy metabolism in rodent models of obesity, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, addiction, maternal programming, spinal cord injury, muscle wasting, and cancer. This proposal requests funds to purchase a TSE PhenoMaster system with telemetry capabilities and a Bruker TD-NMR LF110 instrument. The TSE PhenoMaster automated home cage phenotyping system provides metabolic, behavioral, and physiological data in conscious rodents. This system continuously and simultaneously measures food and water intake, energy expenditure via indirect gas calorimetry, body weight, body temperature, and locomotor activity. The PhenoMaster system will be integrated with Stellar implantable telemetry to allow for simultaneous measurement of biopotentials (e.g. blood pressure, EEG, ECG, EMG, body temperature, activity). The Bruker TD-NMR LF110 system provides assessment of body composition, critical to interpret changes in energy balance found in the metabolic phenotyping cages. This system provides non-invasive measurement of fat, lean, and fluid mass in conscious rodents using time-domain magnetic resonance spectroscopy (TD-NMR). The major advantage of the Bruker LF110 system is that it can be used for both mice and rats with weights ranging from 25 grams to over 1 kilogram (current Bruker LF50 limits size to 300 grams). This is critical for the research of the 6 major and 5 minor users outlined in this application, which often incorporates high fat diet-induced rodent models to study impact of nutrition, obesity, and type II diabetes on various outcomes. In choosing the requested equipment, we consulted extensively with colleagues at other institutions and representatives from various manufacturers. There are two important advantages of the PhenoMaster system; Stellar implantable telemetry integration to obtain blood pressure and other biopotentials, and the ability for shared use of one system between mice and rats, with movable and integrated components. The Stellar telemetry has several advantages over competing telemetry equipment as it allows an unlimited number of animals to be monitored at a given time without having to place a receiver under each cage. The requested instrumentation will provide crucial support to our major and minor user projects, and importantly will aid the development of new research projects within our larger research community. The research projects supported by the requested equipment provide essential intellectual underpinnings for understanding of many important chronic diseases and provide a key step in translating knowledge into better and more efficient health care.
The phenotypic analysis of energy balance in experimental rodent models is of critical importance to understand the etiology and pharmacological treatment approaches for numerous chronic disease states. The proposed instrumentation for a metabolic phenotyping system will allow for comprehensive and quantitative dissection of the effects of diet as well as pharmacological and experimental manipulations on energy homeostasis. This equipment will have broad relevance to enhance a wide variety of NIH-funded research projects being conducted at the Penn State College of Medicine including those related to obesity, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, addiction, maternal programming, spinal cord injury, and cancer.
