Molecular Biology Commons^™

Nutritional Supplementation And Skeletal Muscle Health In Chronic Diseases, Hexirui Wu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Prevalence of chronic diseases in the United States keeps increasing in recent years. There are approximately four in ten adults having chronic diseases in America. Chronic diseases include obesity, aging, heart diseases, cancer and many others. This thesis mainly focuses on obesity and aging. Skeletal muscle performance is impaired in obesity and aging conditions. One common reason causing this could be higher fat mass and lower muscle mass. However, there is no study showing what pathways are involved in the imbalance of body composition. Therefore, the first objective of the thesis is to determine gene expression of selected pathways in …

Long-Term Supplementation With Leucine Does Not Prevent Development Of Obesity In Rats Fed A High-Fat Diet, Dameon Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Excess dietary fat consumption has been implicated in the development of obesity and diabetes. Obesity can be characterized by a disproportionate increase in fat mass compared to lean body mass. However, if muscle mass can be increased or maintained in obesity, this may facilitate weight loss by increasing the body’s overall metabolic capacity. Historically, supplementation with the branched-chain amino acid leucine has been shown to increase muscle protein synthesis via the protein kinase mTORC1. Recent studies suggest that supplementation with leucine also has the potential to reduce weight gain and fat deposition in high-fat fed, obese mice. The objective of …

Green Tea Extract Protects Against Fibrogenesis Associated With Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease In Diet-Induced Obese Rats, Allyson M. Bower

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Angiotensinogen Gene Silencing Reduces Lipid Accumulation And Inflammation In Cultured 3t3-L1 Adipocytes, Wenting Xin Carroll

Masters Theses

Obesity is characterized by metabolic complications which are related to several life-threatening diseases. Dysregulated inflammatory adipokines secretion from adipose tissue is believed as the major contributor to obesity-associated local and systemic inflammation, insulin resistance, and other metabolic dysfunctions.

Numerous studies in our lab and others pointed to the role of local adipose tissue renin-angiotensin system (RAS) in the pathogenesis of obesity, inflammation and insulin resistance. We hypothesized that adipocytes-derived angiotensinogen (Agt) played a critical role in adipogenesis and/or lipogenesis as well as adipose inflammation. To test, we established 3T3-L1 preadipocytes stably transfected with Agt-shRNA or scrambled sequence (Sc-shRNA). Transfected preadipocytes …