Grant: Project Grant

When infants are exposed to perturbed nutrition shortly after birth, their metabolism can be altered permanently. For example, if infants are premature or ill at birth, they may require intravenous nutrition, which changes how they process dietary nutrients. These metabolic changes in such infants can become permanent and lead to a higher risk for developing chronic diseases in adulthood, including obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. These permanent metabolic changes are due to changes in the 'methylation' of DNA. A protein-derived nutrient, methionine, provides the methyl groups for this methylation. But in a rapidly growing infant, methionine is also used to make body protein, which can limit the amount available for these methylation reactions, compounding the problem. Because methionine can be toxic, we are testing other dietary nutrients (creatine, betaine) to facilitate this methylation. Using the intravenously fed neonatal piglet as a model, we intend to measure the methionine requirement and determine how much methionine is spared when betaine and creatine are added to the diet. We will also feed intravenous diets with betaine and creatine to see if we can lower the risk for these chronic diseases in adulthood. Overall, this research will help optimize nutrition recommendations for infants and potentially prevent chronic diseases later in life.