Botanicals and Metabolic Resiliency

 描述（由申请人提供）：本申请是我们的植物膳食补充剂研究中心的更新。我们的植物学研究中心是路易斯安那州立大学（LSU）系统的彭宁顿生物医学研究中心和罗格斯大学植物生物学和病理学系之间的合作努力。该中心的主题是“植物和代谢恢复力”。具体来说，我们的中心准备采取下一个合乎逻辑的科学步骤，评估植物药对促进人类健康的作用， 特别关注植物药促进代谢恢复力和一般健康的功能方面和机制。因此，我们的植物学研究中心将追求令人兴奋的，新颖的和深入的假设，特别强调细胞作用机制，植物学保护和维持正常的组织功能，并在暴露于显著的环境应激源时抵抗组织功能障碍，例如作为致肥胖环境的一部分。植物促进的弹性将保持全身健康。我们把这种特性称为“植物代谢弹性”。“我们的植物学研究中心将包括三（3）个高度合作的研究项目，一个综合生物学核心，一个植物学核心和一个行政核心。我们的中心有三个目标，这将促进协作和互动的研究环境，将确定和评估植物药在促进代谢弹性的潜在功效，并将扩大研究人员解决植物学研究的临界质量。对于这个赠款周期，我们建议扩大对我们有重要数据的植物学的研究（蒿属，项目1和2），同时还评估有希望的新线索（即，千里光灌木[Baccharis halimifolia]）。此外，我们将研究美国消费者和公共卫生利益非常感兴趣的植物药，其作用机制对我们的主题至关重要（即，胡芦巴[胡芦巴]，辣木，和苦瓜（项目1、2、3）。我们增加了其他最先进的方法（例如，活细胞钙成像，肠道微生物组评估），并建议通过探索对植物药反应的个体差异来专门利用我们在功能基因组学/基因表达方面的专业知识。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application is for a renewal of our Botanical Dietary Supplement Research Center. Our Botanical Research Center is a collaborative effort between the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of the Louisiana State University (LSU) System and the Department of Plant Biology and Pathology of Rutgers University. The theme of the Center is "Botanicals and Metabolic Resiliency". Specifically, our Center is poised to take the next logical scientific step in evaluating the role of botanicals for promoting human health by specifically focusing on the functional aspects and mechanisms by which botanicals promote metabolic resilience and general health. As such, our botanical research center will pursue exciting, novel, and in-depth hypotheses with specific emphasis on cellular mechanisms of action by which botanicals preserve and maintain normal tissue function and resist tissue dysfunction when exposed to significant environmental stressors, such as occur as part of an obesogenic environment. The resiliency promoted by botanicals will maintain whole body health. We refer to this characteristic as "botano-metabolic resiliency." Our Botanical Research Center will consist of three (3) highly collaborative research projects, an Integrative Biology Core, a Botanical core, and an Administrative core. Our Center has three aims which will promote a collaborative and interactive research environment, will identify and evaluate botanicals with potential efficacy in promoting metabolic resiliency, and will expand the critical mass of investigators addressing botanical research. For this grant cycle, we are proposing to expand studies on botanicals for which we have significant data (Artemisia sp, Projects 1 and 2), while also evaluating promising new leads (i.e., Groundsel bush [Baccharis halimifolia]) identified in our innovative screening program. In addition, we will study botanicals that are of great interest to the US consumer and of public health interest and whose mechanisms of action appear central to our theme (i.e., Trigonella foenum gracecum [fenugreek], Moringa oleifera Lam., and Momordica charantia [bitter melon]) (Projects 1, 2, 3). We have added additional state-of-the-art methodologies (e.g, live cell calcium imaging, gut microbiome assessment) and propose to specifically leverage our expertise in functional genomics/gene expression by exploring the individual variability in responses to botanicals.