Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Understanding Of Functions Of Selenoproteins And Dietary Selenium By Using Animal Models, Marina V. Kasaikina

Department of Biochemistry: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Selenium (Se) is a trace element that is incorporated into proteins in the form of the 21^st amino acid, selenocysteine (Sec). Se supplementation was reported to have beneficial roles in prevention of cardiovascular and muscle disorders, cancer prevention and enhancement of the immune function. However, recent studies also showed that excessive dietary Se increases the risk of development of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Thus, better understanding of Se and selenoprotein functions is required. We used three approaches to address this problem.

First, we used high-throughput sequencing to examine composition of the gut microflora in mice maintained on selenium-deficient, selenium-sufficient, …