Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Research Scholarships - Master's program

Around 32% of Canadian children are diagnosed with overweight or obesity. This can impact their heart, brain, and liver, causing health problems as they get older. As such, it is important to study how to combat childhood obesity. The answer may lie in human milk. Exclusive breastfeeding can reduce obesity in children, but we need to find out how and why. Recently, it was found that milk contains tiny fat bubbles called milk-derived extracellular vesicles (MEVs). MEVs are like care packages that transport important things, like microRNAs, from parent to child during nursing. MicroRNAs tell the baby’s cells what proteins to make. MicroRNAs inside MEVs can change based on the mother’s health and diet, but it is not known how. This study will look at how MEV microRNAs change when the mother eats a high fat diet. I will feed one group of female rats a 60% high fat diet, causing them to gain weight and become obese. This will put stress on the growing pups. Another group of female rats will be fed a balanced diet with 10% fat. The females will stay on these diets while pregnant and nursing. I will collect milk from the mothers and separate the MEVs from the milk. I will find out how diet changes the microRNAs in the MEVs throughout nursing. This will be done with next generation sequencing technology. I will also look at microRNAs in the liver of male and female pups born to these mothers. Liver samples will be tested to see if the changes in the MEVs impacts pups’ liver health. By learning how and why MEVs change, we can learn why mammalian milk helps babies grow healthy, not just as a food source. This will provide scientific evidence about the goodness of human milk. Also, if MEVs are beneficial, we can use them to make infant formula better and more nutritious.