Grant: Alliance Grants

As humans age physiological performance tends to decline. This can be seen as a decreased capacity to exercise, decreases in cognitive abilities, and an increased susceptibility to disease. These decreases can be worsened by lifestyle choices throughout life, in particular diet. Poor diet choices such as high fat, high sugar diets, can cause re-programming of how various cells in the body handle nutrients. This re-programming can then promote the decreased athletic and cognitive performances seen in aging, as well as increase the likelihood of a variety of age-associated diseases. With an ever-aging population, and increased incidence of lifetime poor dietary choices, addressing these changes are associated with major economic burdens to society. Carnosine is a compound found naturally in the body that consists of two amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) joined together. Work in the laboratory of our proposed collaborator, Dr. Mark D. Turner, has indicated that at a cellular level, dosing with carnosine has molecular effects that suggest it may be beneficial in counteracting the decreases in physiological performance seen during aging and/or in response to poor diets. This proposed collaboration will bring the complimentary expertises of Drs. Turner and Berry together to translate these findings to the whole animal level, and directly measure whether dietary supplementation with carnosine improves exercise, cognitive, and nutrient handling performance throughout lifespan. Such an effect would provide a non-drug, accessible, basis for promoting healthy aging, combatting poor dietary choices, and decrease the associated societal economic burdens.