Research Interests
Systems biology; molecular nutrition; genomics; metabolomics; bioinformatics; nutritional programming of adipose tissue; mammary gland development; lipid metabolism; conjugated linoleic acids (CLA); nutritional and physiological genomics; comparative genomics; regulation of milk fat and protein synthesis; nutritional regulation of muscle development. My research program focuses on the study of how nutrition, physiological state and their interaction affect tissue function and metabolic adaptations through alterations in the transcriptome, i.e. mRNA expression profiles. We rely heavily on cutting-edge technologies such as microarrays, DNA sequencing, quantitative RT-PCR, and bioinformatics to generate biologically-meaningful data. The integration of these data sets is at the core of our Systems Biology efforts in Nutritional Sciences. We use large animals as primary models but also perform more fundamental studies with animal tissue cell lines or explant cultures. Through the use of high-throughput techniques and bioinformatics we intend to identify genes that might be associated with susceptibility to immune and metabolic diseases (e.g. hepatic steatosis, mastitis) and also to developing obesity.