Project description:The typical human diet differs substantially in a number of ways from that of other primates. For instance, although many humans consume meat on a regular basis, non-human primate diets are typically dominated by plant foods. In addition, most human populations cook the majority of their foods, whereas all other free-living primate species eat exclusively raw diets. Such differences in food substrates and food processing are hypothesized to exert a large influence on metabolism. If maintained over evolutionary timescales, dietary differences may have contributed to shaping important human-specific features. To index the effect of food substrate and food preparation on metabolism we measured liver gene expression in mice fed diets of meat or tubers served either raw or cooked.
Project description:Peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) gene expression profiling is a low-invasive tool used in human diet intervention studies. In dogs this technique has been used to investigate disease states but not to examine the effect of diet. We tested the hypothesis that diet alters dog systemic immune cell gene expression profiles by comparing PBMC gene expression in dogs fed either a premium kibbled diet or a raw red meat diet for 9 weeks. Our results showed that diet shifted the dogs’ PBMC gene expression profile and these alterations corresponded with changes in plasma IgA levels. This illustrates that PBMC microarrays are a useful tool that may be applied to study the long-term effects of diet on health outcomes for the dog.
Project description:The Italian island of Sardinia is well known in studies of human population isolates. It is also home to the Fonni's Dog, a breed of canine whose development was reliant on the functionality of the dog. Using genome-wide variant and sequence analyses, we have characterized the Fonni's Dog relative to 27 other dog breeds from the Mediterranean region. We determine introgression events relevant to Mediterranean breed development and describe how the Fonni's dog presents an intriguing model demonstrating the characteristics of traditional human population isolates and, in particular, exhibiting the unique demographic composition of the people of Sardinia.
