Ian Williamson
North Carolina State University, NC·Physiology·Early-career
The gut is not just a tube that absorbs food; it is a metabolically active organ that burns fuels, makes glucose, and releases hormones that tell the rest of the body a meal is coming. Several promising obesity and diabetes drugs act on exactly these functions, yet how they work is only partly understood.
- Fields
Physiology
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
branched-chain amino acids
intestinal metabolism
gut microbiota
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Quantify how much intestinal metabolism of dietary and circulating branched-chain amino acids contributes to whole-body circulating BCAA and downstream metabolite pools.
- Test whether branched-chain amino acids shift fuel use in intestinal cells, as the amino acid glutamine does by reducing their glucose oxidation in fasted and fed states.
- Determine whether intestinal BCAA metabolism interacts with metabolism of microbiota-produced nutrients such as the short-chain fatty acid propionate, and with dietary sucrose.
- Assess whether synergy between microbe-produced and dietary nutrients alters release of incretins, gut hormones from nutrient-sensing cells lining the lumen that prepare the body for a nutrient load and are blunted in obesity and diabetes.
More about the research
At the same time, high blood levels of the branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), three essential protein building blocks, consistently track with obesity and diabetes. Most research has looked at how liver and muscle handle them, largely skipping the intestine, even though circulating BCAAs can only come from diet or from gut microbes, which make more BCAA enzymes in obese and insulin-resistant animals.
Why it matters
Elevated branched-chain amino acids are a consistent marker of obesity and type 2 diabetes, and newer metabolic therapies act on intestinal glucose production and gut hormone release without a clear mechanistic picture. Quantifying how the intestine metabolizes these amino acids alongside microbial and dietary nutrients could clarify where the blood BCAA signature comes from and inform probiotics or drugs that retune gut nutrient handling in metabolic disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Heejin Jun
Texas Tech University, TX·Physiology
Characterize how chronic excessive alcohol alters branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) handling in mouse and human primary brown fat cells, including BCAA accumulation, oxidation and heat production.
Seth Newsome
University of New Mexico, NM·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether gut microbes in wild banner-tailed kangaroo rats make essential amino acids and short-chain fatty acids that hosts absorb, using compound-specific isotope tracing and metatranscriptomics.
Minghua Tang
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Public Health & Epidemiology
Determine how meat-, dairy- and plant-based complementary diets affect infant growth from 5 to 12 months in a 300-infant randomized controlled feeding trial with longitudinal growth and body composition measures.
The school
North Carolina State University: 40 labs on PI Pages, $717M a year on research, 603 research doctorates a year.
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