INTERDISCIPLINARY SCHOLAR AWARD RECIPIENTS
Andrew Whittle
SNI Interdisciplinary Scholar, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Bio
I work to understand how thermogenesis in adipose tissue is altered by changes in diet and metabolic health. In the long term I aim to find ways to specifically exploit thermogenic mechanisms to better treat diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and anorexia.
I am currently identifying and characterizing the neuronal circuits that respond to metabolic and dietary changes to elicit more or less thermogenesis. At the same time I examine the impact of these changes on the metabolic health of cells, tissues and whole organisms. To achieve this I combine the latest nueuromodulatory techniques such as opto- and chemogenetics with my extensive experience performing detailed in vivo and in vitro metabolic phenotyping.
My SNI project will utilize nano-scale electrode arrays to measure the sympathetic nervous system activity in Brown Adipose Tissue in real-time, following modulation of the activity of specific neurons.
Sponsors
Luis De Lecea (Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences) and Bianxiao Cui (Chemistry)
Using nanoelectrodes to measure brown adipose tissue sympathetic nerve activity in vivo
All humans possess brown fat as well as traditional white fat. When active the brown fat cells burn fat to generate heat. People with more, active brown fat tend to weigh less and be metabolically healthier than those with less active brown fat. The activity of the brown fat is controlled by the brain, but we know very little about where in the brain the signals are controlled. It is also currently not possible to directly measure in real-time the activity of brown fat, which makes attributing changes in its activity to changes in specific brain regions very difficult. We aim to use the latest nano-electrodes and implant them into brown fat in mice to record signals from the nerves that control it. By doing this while we switch on and off different neurons in the brain (using viruses that respond to drugs or flashes of light) we hope to identify the brain circuits that regulate brown fat activity. This may allow us to design new therapies that target these neuronal circuits in the brain and maintain higher (or lower) levels of fatburning activity in the brown fat of humans. This would be very useful for treating obesity, diabetes, heart disease and potentially even anorexia.
