Paige Braden-Kuhle Authors TCU Grant

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As part of her PhD dissertation project, Paige has helped secure funding for the lab through TCU Invests in Scholarship to investigate how the common American "Western" diet and a plant-based Mediterranean diet can alter gene expression, and whether these alterations might be passed on to offspring.  Using wild-type mice, Paige will place animals on the two diets from weaning until they are 6-months of age and will then assess any changes in DNA methylation patters, which ultimately affects how genes are expressed.  Then, some animals will breed (within their dietary cohort) and their offspring will be weaned onto a regular animal diet common to all mice in the colony.  Paige will then assess whether any changes are transgenerational, or passed on to their offspring.

Bridey Brown, a former TCU Undergraduate Biology major, and now MS student in the lab of our co-investigator, Dr. Matt Hale (TCU Department of Biology) will perform the bulk of the DNA methylation analyses for this project.

In addition, funding will also allow Paige to investigate the changes in gut microbiome content to see if these changes correlate with changes in immune function.  Microbiome sequencing and analysis will be conducted by our co-investigator, Dr. Michael Allen, from the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center.

Additional co-investigators include Dr. Jada Willis, TCU Department of Nutrition, and Dr. Gary Boehm, TCU Department of Psychology and principle investigator in the TCU Neurobiology of Aging Labs.

Way to go Paige!