Center for Childhood Obesity Prevention

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PROJECT SUMMARY Childhood obesity is a growing threat to public health in the United States. The goal of the Center for Childhood Obesity Prevention (CCOP) at Arkansas Children's Research Institute (ACRI) is to reduce childhood obesity rates in children through integrated, interdisciplinary and translational research. In line with the goals of the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) funding mechanism, to support the establishment and development of innovative, state-of-the-art biomedical research centers at institutions in Institutional Development Award-eligible states, the CCOP has established a Metabolism and Bioenergetics Core (MBC) to make critical biomedical research services available to CCOP investigators. This instrumentation supplement application will be used to purchase a rodent metabolic and behavioral phenotyping system. This key instrumentation will allow the MBC to provide important rodent phenotyping services to CCOP investigators. Accordingly, this supplement will significantly enhance access for CCOP investigators to state-of-the-art metabolic and behavioral phenotyping instrumentation. Beyond obesity, alterations in how our bodies metabolize and partition fuel is linked to the etiology of several chronic diseases. Accordingly, platforms that accurately determine rodent feeding behavior, activity, substrate metabolism and energy expenditure in real-time provide a wealth of important phenotypic data that increase the impact of basic research employing rodent models. Since ACRI is home to two National Institutes for General Medical Sciences COBRE awards, this instrumentation supplement is well positioned to significantly enhance the impact of numerous NIGMS funded research projects by enhancing access to critical instrumentation.