DrAmanda Brandon

My current reasearch projects are:

Nutritional influences on health and lifespan in mice

Understanding the processes and mechanisms that define the relationships between diet and physiology holds great promise for improving human health. Indeed, nutrition has the potential to be the most significant single primary prevention intervention in humans. Tailoring nutrition to the specific needs of the patient and their disease(s) has obvious potential in the management of obesity-associated diseases. However, progress towards this has been impeded by the complex relationships between diet, physiology and health. Traditional approaches have focused on responses linked to individual genes, proteins, pathways or microbial constituents, rather than considering the interactions in the entire system. Similar approaches have typified the science of nutrition, where approaches have usually been ‘one-nutrient-at-a-time’ rather than considering the entire mixture. Studies that focus on perturbing single nutrients or comparing two experimental diets have a high likelihood of providing oversimplified conclusions and increased risk of drawing erroneous conclusions about the relationships between nutrition and pathophysiology. Our approach will investigate the role of varying the ratio of macronutrients (fat, carbohydrate and protein) on the health of mice at various time points after starting the diets to track the age–related changes associated with different dietary regimes.

Gender differences in Metabolism

In pre-clinical nutritional, aging and metabolism research, most studies utilise male animals because of the perceived complication of the oestrus cycle confounding the interpretation of metabolic data. However, because the human population is 50% female and there are multiple studies suggesting that females are somewhat protected from diet-induced obesity, glucose tolerance and insulin resistance, there is a need to investigate and understand the gender-related mechanisms underlying male and female metabolic responses to dietary interventions. This project will use metabolic and omics approaches to examine liver metabolism in male and female mice on chow and high fat diets.

The role of fasting in the health benefits gained from calorie restriction

Calorie restriction is defined as a reduction of energy intake without causing malnutrition. Various studies have proposed that calorie restriction can have beneficial effects on the health and longevity in animal models, preventing the development of obesity, cancer, neurodegeneration, and a broad range of cardiometabolic conditions. While much research is being done to investigate the mechanisms behind these positive effects, a question that has arisen is whether these effects are a result of the reduction in calorie intake alone, or if they can be attributed to the fasting period that often occurs with calorie restriction. This project aims to address this knowledge gap.