Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Society has a preoccupation with fat. This preoccupation is far-reaching and extends from our concern with body fat to food and agriculture. For example in agriculture, there is a focus is on the amount and type of fat in dairy products and livestock. As a population or individual, we do not want to be too fat or too skinny. We are also fixated on how much fat we have and where we store it, whether it is around our stomachs or around our hips and thighs. The places in the body where fat is stored is different in males and females. We know that not all fat is equal and that fat behaves differently based on where and in whom fat is stored. For example, we know that fat stored in the upper body fat tissue releases more fat than in the lower body and that this release of fat is greater in males than in females. However, though we are preoccupied with fat as a society, we don't know much about the fat cell itself, the environment in which the fat cell lives, and how the fat cells interact with the rest of the body. The proposed program of research seeks to understand how fat cells are programmed to store the amount of fat that they do and how fat cell programming affects its surrounding tissue environment and biological systems. We also aim to see whether there are differences in how fat and fat cells behave in males vs females. To answer our questions we want to determine if early-life programming of the fat cell in males and females affects: 1) how the fat stored in muscle is used in excercise, 2) the communication between fat and muscle cells,  3) how fat produces hormones and uses acetyl CoA, a central molecule of metabolism. The findings from the proposed research program will contribute towards changing how we think about fat tissues and cells and its impact on biological systems. If we can understand why fat tissues and fat cells behave the way they do, we can use that information to target changes in their behaviour. This information would potentially benefit our society through impacting health, agriculture, and food science industries. For example, the information could be used to maintain muscle or improve quality of meat from livestock. The potential benefits of our findings are far reaching spanning from individuals to industry.