B. Abstract (Administrative Core) The Pennington Biomedical (PBRC) Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC) was initially established more than 9 years ago to facilitate and promote collaborative and multi-disciplinary interactions to foster new research ideas and enhance the translation of basic nutritional research findings into the clinical arena and ultimately into practical application. In agreement with the reviewers' feedback, we have now expanded from our original theme of ?nutritional programing? to emphasize the more general theme of ?nutrition, obesity and metabolic health through the lifespan?. Like most of the NIDDK NORCs, our research base is related to the metabolic consequences of nutrition on health and diseases. We now plan to address big research questions in obesity and nutrition from the basic science level, to clinical investigation and finally to the population in a translational way. Our overall aim is to focus on the mechanisms involved in health and disease, the study of treatment intervention and the implementation of preventive strategies. The long standing tradition of nutrition and obesity research at PBRC provides an ideal academic environment to undertake interdisciplinary efforts to investigate the environmental and molecular interactions underlying health and disease. With our past 5 years extension of resources (faculty, clinical space, equipment, and support personnel), and an established cadre of outstanding scientists, a Pennington NORC catalyzes novel nutrition and obesity research around the targeted theme. Besides an Administrative Core which provides the administrative infrastructure that will facilitate successful completion of Aims for all Cores, the NORC encompasses 3 scientific cores. 1) The ?Human Phenotyping Core? aims to: provide a comprehensive suite of innovative energy balance and behavioral services in clinical and translational research studies; provide specialist expertise to members; administer a human tissue bio-repository and; expand our fMRI capabilities. 2) The ?Animal Models and Phenotyping Core? provides the required animal models including conditional transgenic or knockout animals and state of the art phenotyping especially in energy balance studies. 3) The ?Molecular Mechanisms Core? offers technologies to discover changes to the epigenome, and measure altered gene expression (i) on the functional genomics and systems biology level by profiling RNA expression, (ii) on the level of tissues and cells by quantitative bioimaging technology to detect where gene expression is affected. A novel development is the analyses of gut microbiome using 16S rRNA metagenomics sequencing. Every year, the NORC also provides support for 2-4 Pilot & Feasibility grants and an Enrichment Program. With an exceptional institutional support, an ideal academic environment and now collaboration with other academic institutions in Louisiana, Pennington has established a strong base of obesity/nutrition research and is now poised to grow in the theme of ?nutrition, obesity and metabolic health through the lifespan?.
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