Min Du
Washington State University, WA·Physiology
More than 30% of pregnant American women are obese, and another 30% are overweight. A mother's obesity during pregnancy can change how her baby's tissues form, raising the child's later risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
- Fields
Physiology
Biology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
maternal obesity
developmental programming
AMP-activated protein kinase
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Test whether maternal obesity suppresses AMPK, an energy-sensing enzyme, and thereby blocks embryonic progenitor cells from committing to a muscle fate, using single-cell omics analysis of mouse embryonic tissue.
- Evaluate whether reduced AMPK links maternal obesity to increased formation of scar-forming (fibrogenic) cells in the embryo, using single-cell sequencing and embryoid body cultures for mechanistic tests.
- Determine whether AMPK can serve as a target to improve embryonic skeletal muscle and brown adipose tissue development in obese pregnancies, and whether this improves offspring muscle and brown fat function.
More about the research
How this happens is still poorly understood. This project looks for the earliest roots of the problem, in changes to the embryo that set up lifelong metabolic trouble.
Why it matters
Children born to obese mothers face higher risks of obesity and type 2 diabetes. By showing how maternal obesity disrupts muscle and brown fat formation in the embryo, this work could identify molecular targets, such as the metformin target AMPK, for therapies that help the growing number of obese mothers deliver healthier children.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Trayambak Pathak
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans, LA·Physiology·Early-career
Test whether calcium entry through Orai3 channels drives mitochondrial heat production in brown adipose tissue to limit fat buildup, by measuring mitochondrial metabolism in Orai3 knockout mice.
Susan L Hamilton
Baylor College of Medicine, TX·Physiology
Test whether the kinase SPEG phosphorylates the muscle calcium channel RYR1 at serine 2902 through its second kinase domain to limit sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium leak, and identify other targets of SPEG's kinase domains in skeletal muscle.
Sona Kang
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Physiology
Define how FAM3D, a protein genetically linked to type 2 diabetes, suppresses heat production and mitochondrial function in mouse and human brown fat cells.
The school
Washington State University: 22 labs on PI Pages, $403M a year on research, 259 research doctorates a year.
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